Paper-10
Name: Ramiz M. Solanki
M. A. Sem:- 2
Roll No. 27
Batch: 2017-19
Enrolment No.2069108420180051
Paper No. 10
Assignment Topic: Symolism in Robert
Frost’s Poems
Email Id: ramiz.solanki39@gmail.com
Submitted to: Department of English
MKBU.
Introduction
Robert Lee
Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was
initially published in England before it was published in America. Known for
his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial
speech,[2] Frost
frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New
England in the early twentieth century, using them to
examine complex social and philosophical themes.
Symbolism in
the Poems of Robert Frost
Nature has inspired countless poets from primitive times to the present. They
have used it as a metaphor for virtually all human emotions-his stormy brow,
her sky blue eyes, as wild as a summer storm. Very few, however, have so
masterfully crafted their verse to fully express the range of nature’s power
and influence, or suited the tone of a poem to encompass both human nature and
‘true’ nature. This is true in the poetic works of Robert Frost. The aspects of
nature that are continually demonstrated in the poems of Frost symbolize both
the physical world and its changes, and the nature of humans.
It can easily be argued that Frost believed that little difference existed
between…show more
content…
He would speak plainly of an emotion or a thought, and
not use symbolism to represent the prolific possibilities that could lie within
a simple subject such as the bee. All of Frost’s poems can be said to contain
symbolism and more often that not it seems to be Frost’s goal to instill in the
reader their own idea of what the symbolism may be. While there are multitudes
of ways to use symbolism, there is also a multitude of possibilities within
each and every poem, if not every line of his poems.
Robert Frost takes the familiar
objects as the subject matters of his poetry but makes them highly suggestive
and symbolic to represent some universal wisdom. Frost’s poetry abounds
in all familiar things like pastures and plains, mountains and
rivers, woods and gardens, groves and bowers, fruits and flowers, and seeds and
birds etc. But Frost treats all these elements of nature differently from the
English romantics. Though Frost is forever linked to the stone-pocked hills and
woods of New England, he treated some themes that have universal appeal.
Robert Frost worked individual poems
into a larger unity by presenting in them a recurrent speaker ,a wise country
person living close to nature and approaching life in a spirit of compassionate
realism.Many people assumed that this speaker was Frost himself ,but in fact it
was a brilliant artistic creation ,a persona or mask . In addision he wrote
many dramatic monologues whose speakers were New England farm people. The poems
in which he makes use of the familiar aspects to suggest a symbolic meaning are
Mending Wall, The Road Not Taken, Stopping by Woods by Snowy Evening, Birches
etc.
In the poem 'The Pasture', we are
introduced with a farmer who is engaged in day to day farming life. The Pasture
describes simple, every day pleasures on the farm. Here the speaker says he is
setting out on an ordinary farm chore to clean the pasture spring of leaves,
and perhaps wait for the water to clear. But in deeper sense the poem shows the
process of purifying human hearts from sin.
Pasture symbolizes the world. To
clean the pasture spring means to purify the heart and soul from sin. Leaves
symbolize the sins that lie inside the heart. ’Wait to watch the water clear”
means wait until the clear from sins.’To fetch the little calf” means to guide
the people who still have weak faith. ’It totters when she licks it with her
tongue” means God will send his messenger to guide the ordinary people. So, God
will not directly give enlightenment to them.
In the poem ‘Mending Wall’, for
example, Frost portrays a typical farming work in the context of New England.
The New England farmers built walls as boundaries to their farms. These walls
often became weak and broke down. So, they needed mending. The poem Mending
Wall is also a poem about two neighbors and a wall. The wall acts as a divider
in separating estates-apple and pine trees. It is a very common picture of
farming life where the people believe that "Good fences make good
neighbors." But the suggestiveness of the poem is very modern in its
approach. The poem is based on the modern theme of isolation. Modern men built
boundaries and made themselves isolated from each other. Frost’s metaphysical
treatment of this physical and psychological isolation is also an evidence of
his modernity. In “Mending Walls”, Frost juxtaposes the two opposite aspects of
the theme of the poem and then leaves it to the reader to draw his own
conclusion. The conservative farmer says:
Good fences make good neighbor
and the modern radical farmer says:
Something there is that doesn’t love
a wall,
But the question remains unsolved.
And it is up to the readers if they will keep the wall or pull down it.
'Stopping By woods on a Snowy
Evening' is another poem, in which the familiar things finally become highly
suggestive. Apparently, the poem describes the evening walk of a rural farmer,
may be the poet himself. But out of his evening walk beside a snowy woods, the
traveler discovers a truth universal in appeal.
In the poem “Mowing” the poet as a
laborer identifies himself with his scythe. The narrator works in the field on
a hot day. He notices that his scythe seems to be whispering as it
works. Instead of dreaming about inactivity or reward for its labor as a person
would, the scythe takes its sole pleasure from its hard work. It receives
satisfaction from “the fact” of its earnest labor in the field, not from
transient dreams or irrational hopes. The narrator follows the scythe’s
example: seizing on the pleasure of hard work and making hay.
In the poem 'Two Tramps in Mud Time'
Frost has taken notice of both the bright and dark aspects of nature. Beneath
the apparently beautiful calm there is lurking turmoil and storms:
Be glad of water, but don’t forget
The lurking frost in the earth
beneath
There is a famous poem “Stopping by
Woods on a Snowy Evening”. On the surface, it is a poem about a traveler who
feels tempted to go into the woods which are “lovely, dark and deep” and to
stay there in order to enjoy their strange beauty and charm, but who is not able
to carry out his wish on account of the realization that he has promises to
keep and miles to go. But the poem has a deeper, symbolic significance. The
words “promises”, “miles”, and “sleep” have deeper meanings. “Promises” and
“miles to go” imply duties and responsibilities. “Sleep” symbolizes death.
There are the promises which he has made to himself and to others, or which
others have made on his behalf. And there are the miles he must travel through
other kinds of experience before he yields to that final and inevitable
commitment-death. We are not told that the call of social responsibility proves
stronger than the attraction of the woods, which are "lovely" as well
as "dark and deep’. The dichotomy of the poet's obligations both to the
woods and to a world of promises is what gives this poem a universal appeal.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
The closing stanza of the poem is
especially symbolic. The poem symbolically expresses the conflict which
everyone feels between the demands of the practical life and a desire to escape
into the land of reverie.
The poem “The Road Not Taken” was
also based on the poet’s personal experience. It was based on his visit to the
woods of Plymouth, New Hampshire in 1911-1912. But the poem symbolizes the
universal problem of making a choice of invisible barriers built up in the
minds of the people which alienate them from one another mentally and
emotionally, though they live together or as neighbors in the society. At the
heart of the poem is the romantic mythology of flight from a fixed world of
limited possibility into a wilderness of many possibilities combined with
trials and choices through which the pilgrim progresses to divine perfection.
'Apple Picking' describes the
feelings, of a man who has been plucking apples from the apple trees. He's
describing how he takes them off the tree and places them in a bucket and sends
them off. His is a tired apple picker. He cherishes the apples like they were
jewels. After a long day’s work, the speaker is tired of apple picking and
feels sleep coming on.
Similarly the Birch trees in
“Birches” symbolize man’s desire to seek escape from the harsh suffering man to
undergo in this world.
The poem Design is saying that god
is both good and evil and has a design for all things big and small. The
whiteness of the flower, spider, and moth represent purity. However the scene
itself could be construed as evil. But since everything is under god's design
he must have designed it to happen that way. Perhaps he is saying that
everything can be looked upon as good or evil depending on your perspective.
In the poem ’Fire and Ice”, fire
symbolizes the heat of passion while ice represents the cold hate. The extremes
of both passion and hate have the power to destroy and annihilate the world.
Robert Frost’s insightful yet tragic
poem “Out, Out--” employs realistic imagery and the personification of a buzz
saw to depict how people must continue onward with their lives after the death
of a loved one, while also hinting at the selfish nature of the human race,
whom oftentimes show concern only for themselves.
Frost begins the poem by describing
a young boy cutting some wood using a buzz-saw. The setting is Vermont and the
time is late afternoon. The sun is setting and the boy's sister calls him to
come and eat supper. As the boy hears its dinner time he gets excited and cuts
his hand by mistake. Realizing that the doctor might cut his hand off because
of this, he immediately asks his sister to make sure that does not happen. By
the time the doctor arrives it is too late and the hand is already lost. When
the doctor gives him anaesthetic, the boy falls asleep never to wake up again.
The last sentence of the poem which states that "since they [the boys
family and the doctor] were not the one dead, turned to their affairs"
shows how although the boys death is tragic, people move on with their life
(Wikipedia)
Bibliography
Wikipedia, Contributers. Rober
Frost. 04 November 2018. 04 November 2018
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost>.
(Literary)
Bibliography
Articles, Literary. Use of Symbols
in Poetry of Robert Frost. 04 November 2018
<http://www.literary-articles.com/2013/12/use-of-symbolssymbolism-in-poetry-of.html>.
Wikipedia,
Contributers. Rober Frost. 04 November 2018. 04 November 2018
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost>.
