Desert Places Robert Frost Summary

Robert Frost's 'Desert Places' is a testament to the harrowing nature of solidarity. By subjecting the narrator to the final moments of daylight on a snowy evening, an understanding about the nature of blank spaces and emptiness becomes guratively

In the poem by Robert Frost, you read of a man taking a moment to enjoy the blissful serenity of a quiet snowy evening in the woods. It reflects the enchanted tranquility of the moment. There is no disturbance, no commotion nor a bit of turbulence in the man’s surroundings. Instead, there is a peaceful beauty that he wishes to take a moment and enjoy. This poem takes you into the exact peacefulness of the moment he is experiencing.

Frost, within his poems, seems primarily concerned with the reader’s ability to comprehend the psychological “landscape” of the person (or persons) that he is depicting. This aspect of his works, as well as his great love of nature and landscape depiction, both contribute to the environment that he has created within “Home Burial”. The reader of “Home Burial” does not achieve a comprehensive view of the psychological landscape of the two characters through first person accounts; however, throughout the dialogue and the interaction of the two characters, the reader may come to infer the major psychological attributes of each and to understand the dynamic within that relationship under the

Nature plays a huge role in every poem written by Frost. Nature is displayed numerous times throughout this poem. In lines 1-3 it says “All out of doors looked darkly in at him through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, that gathers on the pane in empty rooms.” There is lots of nature displayed throughout this poem, frequently demonstrated in the form of personification. Also in lines 18-20 it says, “ He consigned to the moon, such as she was, so late-arising, to the broken moon as better than the sun in any case for such a charge, his snow upon the roof, his icicles along the wall to keep;”

The world has several great poets and many mind-blowing works, each with its own way of portraying its own message and some the same ones. Jane Flanders wrote the poem named “Cloud Painter” she shows the world from an artistic way, using a painter and his canvas to help the reader picture the true meaning behind the words and images created. Robert Frost takes on the same idea but uses a less complex example so that it makes his work easy to understand while not revealing the real meaning of the poem. Frost and Flanders are just two of the many poets that use nature as a way of explaining the very lessons in life. Each poet has a different way of presenting similar images but from a different perspective.

Robert Frost’s poem “Desert Places” diminishes an overall sense of emptiness to being nothing compared to what he holds within himself through the use of connotative diction. Throughout the poem, the description of a cold, dark night represents the intensity of the depression that Frost was feeling. In the final stanza, Frost reveals that “I have it in me so much nearer home, To scare myself with my own desert places”, “it” being the darkness previously mentioned in the poem. Furthermore, the “desert places” introduced in the final line are a representation of the dark emotions Frost was experiencing, and to state that they were within him, provide the sense that he did not express them to other people, meaning he chose to be left with a cold, dark state of mind. Overall, “Desert Places” is deemed as Frost’s admittance to not fearing the troubles of the rest of the world, because they could not cause him any greater pain that what his own troubles already have.

In “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, the author develops the powerful theme of a person’s relationship with nature using repetition and rhyme. The repetition of the phrase at the end of the poem brings attention to the obligations that the speaker has that conflict with their desire to slip into the darkness of the woods and succumb to the lure of nature. The poem ends with “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.” This stanza encompasses the theme of the poem; the contradiction between two sides of the person. With the delicate usage of words in the poem, the author is able to communicate the theme. The poem is the author’s way of commenting on the human condition but also on the beauty of nature. The woods are described as dark and deep, but also lovely which implies the speakers hesitant desire for darkness and the ending of

In the book “Critical Reception,” the author, Linda W. Wagner, writes several articles of her opinion on some of Robert Frost’s work. I found “Critical Reception” very helpful in understanding “Mending Wall” because it gave me an insight on Frost’s style and similar themes in his poetry. I concluded that Robert Frost, in some of his works including “Mending Wall,” was a poet fascinated by the mind and by very earthly objects; dealing with how people felt about life in conjunction with the environment. For example, in the poem “Sand Dunes,” Frost describes the sea and a woman, who in actuality is the sand dune. He transforms the sand dune into a person by referring to the dune as a she (Wagner 72).

One of the most monumental poetic works of T.S Eliot is ‘The Waste Land’. The poem emerges as a gigantic metaphor for melancholy, loneliness, solitude- the unavoidable companions of human existence. Similar kinds of feelings are evoked by Robert Frost in ‘Desert Places’.

During the height of Robert Frost’s popularity, he was a well-loved poet who’s natural- and simple-seeming verse drew people - academics, artists, ordinary people both male and female - together into lecture halls and at poetry readings across the country.1 An eloquent, witty, and, above all else, honest public speaker, Frost’s readings imbued his poetry with a charismatic resonance beyond that of the words on paper, and it is of little surprise that people gathered to listen. Yet it remains somewhat ironic that his poetry would possess this power to bring individuals together - poetry that, for the most part, contains a prevailing theme of alienation, of a sense of separation

In Frost's poem “Desert Places” the speaker feels like he or she is in their own isolated place with no hope of being truly free from it. In Frost’s poems there is a lot of use of connotation for deeper meanings, like the connotation of snow could be representing sadness and the isolation of night: “Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast”(1). The apparent fast snow and night could show that the feeling of isolation is new and sudden, giving view to new isolation. Frost makes it obvious to the reader that the speaker feels isolated with the repetition of the word lonely: “And lonely as it is the loneliness / will be more lonely ere it will be less”(9-10). This brings the idea that the speaker is trying to get help by trying to make their loneliness explicit. At the end of the poem the speaker scares him or herself because of what is to come of their isolation: “To scare myself with my own desert places.”(16). Bringing the fact of uncertainty in the speaker's future with this new deserted place.

Robert Frost’s "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “Desert Places” are complementary works which coincide with the naturesque elements most commonly ascribed to Frost. The two poems were published over a decade apart in a period after the first World War where feelings of lack of community and self-worth had grown in precedents amongst the general public. The early years of Frost’s literary career were spent on his poultry farm in Derry, New Hampshire as he toiled his land. Although Frost made for a bad farmer and suffered many difficulties and losses, it was during that time when he developed his colloquial style of poetry. Of his numerous works, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “Desert Places” both share a common wintertime setting and similar, but contrasting, language and themes.

In this competitive world, everyone is attempting to earn more money than others and due to this race they are losing their original purpose which is to have healthy relationships with others and enjoy their life. Individuals these days very much indulge in themselves and are not spending adequate time with others. Research performed by scientists showed that isolation is one of the contributing causes of depression and other mental health disorders. People have begun to appreciate money and fame more than their own happiness which is causing their life to be empty and meaningless. In the poem “The Desert Places” by Robert Frost the narrator encounters loneliness and isolation and talks about how it’s affecting his mental well-being

Robert Frost’s poem “Desert Places” diminishes an overall sense of emptiness to being nothing compared to what he holds within himself through the use of connotative diction. Throughout the poem, the description of a cold, dark night is meant to represent the intensity of the depression that Frost was feeling. In the final stanza, Frost reveals that “I have it in me so much nearer home, To scare myself with my own desert places”, “it” being the darkness previously mentioned in the poem. The “desert places” introduced in the final line are a representation of the dark emotions Frost was experiencing, and

Winter is typical of death, as fortified in lines 6 to 11. The change from winter to spring and therefore, the cycle of nature, echoes the inescapable cycle of death as indicated at in the main line of the poem and upheld by the second stanza. Frost recommends that the acknowledgment of death is "dependably the same," quietly inferring his encounters with the deaths of individuals throughout his life have been visit. Through encountering the deaths of such a variety of friends and family, Frost recommends that in spite of the fact that the "onset" of agony is apparently endless, time ebbs away a portion of the overwhelming despondency and distress, even as death still waits in his heart, as resounded in the last two lines of the poem. Nonetheless, like his clear portrayal of the primary snowfall flagging winter's entry and how it covers everything ("the gathered snow lets down as white… on the yet revealed ground"), demise is inescapable and when it arrives, he feels as if he is encompassed by