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Poems of Robert Frost: Characteristics & Themes.
Ø Prepared by : KAVITABA P. GOHIL
Ø Roll No: 19
Ø Batch : 2017-19
Ø Email : kavitabaprahaladsinhjigohil@gmail.com
Ø Enrollment No: 2069108420180018
Ø M.A (English) : SEM -3
Ø Paper – 10 : THE AMERICAN LITERATURE
Ø Submitted to : Smt .S. B Gardi, Department of English, MK Bhavnagar University.
Ø Words count: -
#ROBERT FROST:
Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, but his family moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1884 following his father’s death. The move was actually a return, for Frost’s ancestors were originally New Englanders, and Frost became famous for his poetry’s engagement with New England locales, identities, and themes. Frost graduated from Lawrence High School, in 1892, as class poet, and two years later, the New York Independent accepted his poem entitled “My Butterfly,” launching his status as a professional poet with a check for $15.00. Frost's first book was published around the age of 40, but he would go on to win a record four Pulitzer Prizes and become the most famous poet of his time, before his death at the age of 88.
Such symbolic import of mundane facts informs many of Frost’s poems, and in “Education by Poetry”, he explained: “Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, ‘grace’ metaphors, and goes on to the most profound thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. ... Unless you are at home in the metaphor, unless you have had your proper poetical education in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere.”
# Characteristics & Themes.
Frost’s poems deal with man in relation with the universe. Man’s environment as seen by frost is quite indifferent to man, neither hostile nor benevolent. Man is alone and frail as compared to the vastness of the universe. Such a view of “man on earth confronting the total universe” is inevitably linked with certain themes in Frost's poetry.
One of the most striking themes in Frost’s poetry is man’s isolation from his universe or alienation from his environment. Frost writes in “Desert Places”, “The loneliness includes me unawares”. Man is essentially alone, as is borne out in Frost's poetry. Frost is not so much concerned with depicting the cultural ethos of New England people as with presenting them “caught up in a struggle with the elementary problem of existence”. The New England of Frost reflects his consciousness of “an agrarian society isolated within an urbanized world”. Man is alone in the countryside or in the city in “Acquainted with the Night”.
“I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away from an interrupted cry
But not to call me back or say good-bye;”
In “Home Burial”, the woman suffers from a terrible sense of self-alienation, as well as alienation from her surroundings. In addition, more than the physical loneliness, man suffers from the loneliness within.
“I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare me with my own desert places”
# HUMAN LIMITATION
Practically all of Frost’s poems depict the theme of human limitation. The universe seems chaotic and horrific because man’s limited faculties cannot comprehend its meaning. Walls, physical and real, mental and invisible, separate man from Nature. “Neither Out Far Nor In Deep” shows man’s limitation concerning the mysterious universe. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” conveys the sense of an impenetrable and indefinite universe. Frost’s human beings are aware of the gap between the ideal and the actual. The apple-picker had set out on his work with great hopes but faces disillusionment.
“For I have too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.”
#THEME OF EXTINCTION
The theme of extinction or death also runs through the major themes of Frost. In many, a poem he writes of “sleep” which is associated with death. “Fire and Ice” is a noteworthy poem on destruction by an excess of desire or hatred. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, “After Apple Picking”, “An Old Man’s Winter Night”, all these poems have a reference to death. “Directive” is a poem in which three of Frost’s most obsessive themes isolation, extinction and the final limitations of man are blended. Each life is shown to be pathetic because it wears away into death. The poem dismays but it also consoles.
This theme is closely related to the theme of communication. The majority of the characters in Frost's poems are isolated in one way or another. Even the characters that show no sign of depression or loneliness, such as the narrators in "The Sound of Trees" or "Fire and Ice," are still presented as detached from the rest of society, isolated because of their unique perspective. In some cases, the isolation is a far more destructive force. For example, in "The Lockless Door," the narrator has remained in a "cage" of isolation for so many years that he is too terrified to answer the door when he hears a knock. This heightened isolation keeps the character from fulfilling his potential as an individual and ultimately makes him a prisoner of his own making. Yet, as Frost suggests, this isolation can be avoided by interactions with other members of society; if the character in "The Lockless Door" could have brought himself to open the door and face an invasion of his isolation, he could have achieved a greater level of personal happiness.
# Communication
Communication or the lack thereof, appears, as a significant theme is several of Frost's poems, as Frost presents it as the only possible escape from isolation and despair. Unfortunately, Frost also makes it clear that communication is extremely difficult to achieve. For example, in "Home Burial," Frost describes two terrible events: the death of a child and the destruction of a marriage. The death of the child is tragic, but the inability of the husband and wife to communicate with each other and express their grief about the loss is what ultimately destroys the marriage. Frost highlights this inability to communicate by writing the poem in free verse dialogue; each character speaks clearly to the reader, but neither is able to understand the other. Frost explores a similar theme in "Acquainted with the Night," in which the narrator is unable to pull himself out of his depression because he cannot bring himself even to make eye contact with those around him. In each of these cases, the reader is left with the knowledge that communication could have saved the characters from their isolation. Yet, because of an unwillingness to take the steps necessary to create a relationship with another person, the characters are doomed.
#NATURE:
Nature figures prominently in Frost’s poetry and his poems usually include a moment of interaction or encounter between a human Speaker and a natural subject or phenomenon. These encounters culminate in profound realizations or revelations, which have significant consequences for the speakers. Actively engaging with nature—whether through manual labor or exploration—has a variety of results, including self-knowledge, deeper understanding of the human condition, and increased insight into the metaphysical world. Frost’s earlier work focuses on the act of discovery and demonstrates how being engaged with nature leads to growth and knowledge. For instance, a day of harvesting fruit leads to a new understanding of life’s final sleep, or death, in “After Apple-Picking” (1915). Mid-career, however, Frost used encounters in nature to comment on the human condition. In his later works, experiencing nature provided access to the universal, the supernatural, and the divine, even as the poems themselves became increasingly focused on aging and mortality.
Throughout Frost’s work, speakers learn about themselves by exploring nature, but nature always stays indifferent to the human world. In other words, people learn from nature because nature allows people to gain knowledge about them and because nature requires people to reach for new insights, but nature itself does not provide answers. Frost believed in the capacity of humans to achieve feats of understanding in natural settings, but he also believed that nature was unconcerned with either human achievement or human misery. Indeed, in Frost’s work, nature could be both generous and malicious. The speaker of “Design” (1936), for example, wonders about the “design of darkness” that has led a spider to kill a moth over the course of a night. While humans might learn about themselves through nature, nature and its ways remain mysterious.
#DAILY LIFE:
Frost is very interested in the activities of everyday life because it is this side of humanity that is the most "real" to him. Even the most basic act in a normal day can have numerous hidden meanings that need only to be explored by a poetic mind. For example, in the poem "Mowing," the simple act of mowing hay with a scythe is transformed into a discussion of the value of hard work and the traditions of the New England countryside. As Frost argues in the poem, by focusing on "reality," the real actions of real people, a poet can sift through the unnecessary elements of fantasy and discover "Truth." Moreover, Frost believes that the emphasis on everyday life allows him to communicate with his readers more clearly; they can empathize with the struggles and emotions that are expressed in his poems and come to a greater understanding of "Truth" themselves.
#REFERENCES:
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