Robert Frost

Perhaps most telling of Robert Frost's poetry is the reflection is has on his life. All of his writings are easy to understand and are not relatively flamboyant in nature with little left for interpretation. Frost was simply a writer, a teacher, and a on the surface, a simple man. His works, however, seem to point to an imagination that was comforted by humble origin, free from ostentation. His poetry is laced with beautiful imagery that remains unique and personal. He has truly put into our minds a tangible taste of objectivity and grace.

While reading "Mending Wall," I decided that in order to grab something of deeper meaning from the work, I would reread it aloud to my mother. It was soon determined that Frost meant exactly what he was saying by his poem: there is a wall diving two neighbors, and during the spring, they converse while mending the damage weather has done to it. At the end of the selection, I commented, "So, apparently the one man is just grumpy." My mother's response was how I came to understand the story in the poetry. She said, "Well, it's not that he is grumpy. The wall might keep him from that." It's true and evidenced in the sentence "Good fences make good neighbors." The narrator questions the rebuilding of the wall because he says they have no reason to build it, but the other man knows that there are boundaries (as there are in anything) and would like to keep them.

"The Road Not Taken" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" are both representative of Frost's simplicity and little moments that he so often writes. Both stories reflect on a bigger and better decision, but the appreciation of a decisive and quiet moment. Also an element in each is the weather. Frost writes of a quiet "yellow wood" with "undergrowth" in "The Road Not Taken," signals of growth and joy and delight, apparently in taking the road less traveled by. In "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," the author depicts the "darkest evening of the year" with "wind and downy flake" in the woods, a symbol of life and snow, a symbol of death. It is apparent with that knowledge and the line of "miles to go before I sleep" that the reader can infer the narrator is on a journey that is coming to a close and he has things to do before he can stop and enjoy the scenery. As learned in many classes before, the weather is never coincidence in a story, and definitely not in this poem. In both, there is inner and outer weather to take into account.

In both "Birches" and "Out, Out" by Robert Frost, there is an obvious element of childhood. The two are, however, exactly the opposite. In "Birches," the narrator pines for childhood of the simplicity that came with it, symbolized by his adolescent memories of swinging along birch trees. Throughout the poem the reader can infer the narrator is aging or elderly in remembering those days fondly, and that he'd like to do that activity again in his older age. The man in the story doesn't wish to come to terms with his growing older or the death that will come and says that if he has to go, he'd like to go swinging from the birch trees. "Out, Out" takes a much different tone in that the boy assigned to do a grown man's work is much too young/immature to carry out the job he's been given. He does not yearn to grow older as the man in "Birches" wished for his childhood, but instead, must do the task he's been assigned. Perhaps there is something to say in that the job ends in his demise.

"Design" is another easy-to-understand piece that reminded me of a fairly common saying: big things come in small packages. Whether it be the spider or the flower, Frost has witnessed a gloomy scene that he turns into something of awe. He seems to take on the cold-blooded pallor that he has seen in the force of nature when looking at the scene, the contrast of the course of natural events that is so dreary. Once again, Frost is analyzing a simple event in nature and describing it so uniquely, in such a way that only Frost can do. This poem, though, has definitely taken on a deeper element, much like the mind of Robert Frost in his own simple world.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if I had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

- Robert Frost