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Analysis Of Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening By Robert Frost

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While Robert Frost is often portrayed as a regionalist poet, whose focus typically turns to the simplicity and beauty of the New England landscape, many of Frost’s poems have an underlying darkness; “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” a seemingly simple glimpse into the beauty of a winter night, is in both content and form a metaphor for the contemplation of suicide.
The title of the poem suggests a familiarity, with the narrator “stopping by” the woods, a neighborly phrase that suggests that he has been in this place before (Saunders). The woods symbolize death and oblivion, and as such, it’s implied that this is not the first time that the narrator has considered death and taking his own life. It is a sentiment echoed in the opening …show more content…

The poet could have used the word longest in place of darkest, as they contain the same number of syllables, the with the stress in the same location, however Frost chose the word “darkest,” a word that carries heavier undertones. Therefore, the phrase is more likely symbolic of the feeling of deep depression. This stanza is symbolic of the narrator reconsidering his contemplated suicide as a decision that he should not make when he is in such a lonely place at such a dark hour.
The horse “gives his harness bells a shake to ask if there is some mistake,” symbolizes the breaking of the spell, or the shaking of the conscience; it is the equivalent of shaking one’s head to remove unwanted thoughts (Norton 245). The horse, or the narrator’s conscience, is suggesting that he’s making a mistake. The harness bells are the only sound beyond the “sweep of easy wind and downy flake,” symbols of how simple and peaceful death would be with the term “downy” evoking the imagery of comfort (Norton 245). The stanza serves as a turning point in the poem, where the narrator’s conscience is louder than his desire to be lost within the woods.
In the final stanza, the narrator reaffirms the temptation of the woods, the temptation of death, saying that “the woods are lovely, dark and deep,” a welcomed oblivion (Norton 245). However, he decides that he has “promises to keep,” other obligations in his life that he is unwilling to leave behind, even

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