Robert Frost as a Nature Poet Paper No.-10

Name :- Gohil Devangiba A.

Roll No. :- 14

M.A Sem. :- 3

Paper No. : - 10 ( The American Literature )

Topic :-  Robert Frost as a Nature Poet

Email id :- devangibagohil786@gmail.com

Submitted to Department of English Maharaja Krisnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

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          Robert Frost as a Nature Poet

                                                       

                 Robert Frost (1874-1963) was the leading modern American poet of nature and rural life. He found beauty and meaning in commonplace objects, such as a drooping birch tree and an old stone wall, and drew universal significance from the experiences of a farmer or a country boy. Most of his poems have a New England setting and deal with the theme of man’s relationship to nature.

                     The influence of nature in Robert Frost’s works creates a palette to paint a picture filled with symbolism for the reader to interpret. In the analysis of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, Tree At My Window, Two Trumps In The Mud Time and Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening we can pick out specific examples to illustrate Frost’s overall use of nature.

                    The poetry of Robert Frost has many layers of meaning. Though his poems, on the surface level, seem simple and shallow, but a deeper study reveals that Frost is a great philosopher and realist who has delved deep to know the real meaning of life. The treatment of nature in his poems is not merely related to the outward beauty of the various facets of nature, but to reveal a deeper message through it.

    “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening”

                 In the poem “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” there is a lot of nature expressed. Frost’s very first sentence already talks about the woods. Whose woods these are we don’t know. Also, in the poem he states that the narrator likes to sit and watch the snow. He is also a nature lover. In the second stanza Frost refers back to the woods. He must also like ice, because he brings ice and cold up a lot in his poems. Once again Frost brings ice up when he mentions flake and cold wind.
                      Then in the last stanza Frost mentions woods again. Even though the narrator has a long way to go he always has enough time to stop and watch the small thing in nature in detail. This goes to show that Frost’s interest in nature is very large, and he portrays this through his characters.

                                                 “Mending Wall”

               In “Mending Wall,” the poet is the speaker of the poem. He and his neighbor get together every spring to renovate the stone wall between their individual properties. “Mending Wall” is one of the most widely quoted poems. It was published in 1915. In this poem, the regular duty of the farmer is to keep his stone wall in good order. Two characters in the poem a young man and his neighbor. The young narrator is the poet himself. His manner and opinions are expressed in the poem. The other character is the poet’s neighbor, an old farmer, who does not speak a single word though we come to know about his observation and attitudes from what the speaker says about him.

                              The central situation of the poem has given scope to a social or symbolic interpretation and cultural problems have been analyzed as well. Robert Frost tries to search human tendency and the social aspects. He overtly observed the human psychology. Frost tries to find out the factual situation of the human tendency in critical moment, so that the poet wants to suggest that the man has become a wayward. He search himself in the whimsical world .He reveals the realistic picture of the society. He described the social confrontation before the readers and also expressed his idea and suggestion through the lyrics. He shows the right path and way of life where man is thoroughly invisible in day to day life. Frost suggests that human being should get an internal relief in chaotic situation. It is a human exploration by Frost.

                              

                              “Fire and Ice”

              In his poem “Fire and Ice", Here he uses contradictory word. Fire-with the emotion of desire and ice with hate. The poem describes a fictional debate between people who say that the world will end in fire and people who say it will end in ice. The debate is highly symbolic.

                   The poem itself does not require a large amount of explanation as to meaning of words or phrases, due to Frost’s concentration on making the poem readable and understandable by all. Despite the simplicity of the language use, the poem carries with it very deep thematic ideas. Essentially, Frost is providing commentary upon two of the darkest traits of humanity: the capacity to hate, and the capacity to be consumed by lust. In giving desire the foremost position in regards to the destruction of the world, Frost is providing a powerful statement on the subject of greed and jealousy, saying that above all else, even hatred, this is the trait of humanity that is most likely to lead to its demise. In light of the fact that this was written in regards to the Great War, this statement is essentially attributing the cause of the war to human greed and lust, in doing so providing a current and relatable warning against this behavior in the future. Following his statement upon fire and desire, Frost then attributes hatred with almost the same capacity to do harm as desire, saying “I think I know enough of hate / to say that for destruction ice…would suffice.”

                          “The Gift Outright”

               “The Gift Outright” is different from all; it serves as history, and political statement. The title gains complexity throughout the poem. Frost talk about nation in this poem poet use the word ‘She’ for land. The subject of the poem is American history. In the beginning of life in America, the land and labored to survive.

                                    The poem can also be read as somewhat defensive and even belligerent in terms of its approach to the land. Frost repeats the term “ours” numerous times in the text, but insists that the “we” of the poem is the white settlers from Europe, rather than the original “owners” of the land: the Native Americans. Frost chooses to ignore the conflict between the colonists and the Native Americans and instead focuses on the clash between the Old World and the New World, the European world of tradition and oppression and the new American world of freedom and destiny. As a result, the type of American identity that Frost expresses is very different from the contemporary understanding of the American identity as an amalgamation of different cultures and ethnicities.

                                    "Design"

                                 Robert Frost's "Design" is a meditation on human attempts to see order in the universe--and human failures at perceiving the order that is actually present in nature. The speaker of the poem perceives what he takes to be a significant coincidence, and then speculates on what the coincidence might mean, or whether it means anything at all. However, he fails to see that there is a very good reason for the coincidence he spots, and the "design" of nature that it implies is quite different from anything he suggests.

                                  The existence of such a design leaves open the question of whether God exists. An atheist would take the explanation above as evidence that there are rational explanations for natural processes, and that there is no need to invoke the concept of God to explain how the universe works. In other writings, Frost does appear to profess belief in God (albeit belief of a complex kind). The focus of "Design," then, is not ultimately the existence or absence of God, but rather the tendency of humans to engage in what John Ruskin called the "pathetic fallacy"--the act of reading oneself into nature. The first act of responsible belief, Frost implies, is seeing nature as it is.

                                   "Home Burial"

                                  "Home Burial" is a dramatic poem written in iambic meter.  The poem is almost entirely dialogue, with only a few narrative lines that serve the purposes of defining the spatial relations between the couple and establishing the tension between them, such as when he stands over her and she cowers below him, and when she opens the door wider to leave.   

                    The poem is a study of misinterpretation.  The man reacts to the death of his child by throwing himself into his work, figuratively, and by focusing on a fence.  She sees him as throwing dirt from the child's grave as if he were doing anything else, as if he were performing any usual chore.  He comments on the fence deteriorating, and she fails to see that to him, the fence may represent the child, or at least, that he is attempting to ignore his grief by focusing on something else. 

                          Frost in "Home Burial" demonstrates his ability to present a vignette featuring common people using the rigid form of iambic rhythm and meter, and to make even the dialogue appear and sound natural. 

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Reference :-

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