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Essay on Hardships in Birches by Robert Frost

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Hardships in Birches by Robert Frost

In any life, one must endure hardship to enjoy the good times.
According to Robert Frost, the author of "Birches", enduring life's hardships can be made easier by finding a sane balance between one's imagination and reality. The poem is divided into four parts: an introduction, a scientific analysis of the bending of birch trees, an imaginatively false analysis of the phenomenon involving a New England farm boy, and a reflective wish Frost makes, wanting to return to his childhood. All of these sections have strong underlying philosophical meanings. Personification, alliteration, and other sound devices support these meanings and themes.

Frost supports the theme by using language to seem …show more content…

Birch trees are naturally very flexible. Frost explains that this is caused by ice storms placing weight upon the branches: "When I see birches bend to left and right / Across the line of straighter darker trees, / I like to think some boy' been swinging in them. / But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. / Ice storms do that. Often you must have seen them". He writes of the difference between childhood and adulthood in the first two lines of this passage. The comparison is of the youthful birches with children playing in them to the dark and rigidly conforming straight tree. The "straighter darker trees" are the symbol of adulthood, of the ridiculous redundancy of the private sector. Frost appears to despise this repetitiveness and for this reason, he becomes a poet. In this occupation he can use his imagination, and walk the border between the birches and the straight trees. The theme of the poem refers to finding a balance between realism and imagination, and that finding this balance would help ease the pains of life downtrodden times. There is, however, a twist to this theme:
"They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load / And they seem not to break; though one they are bowed / So low for long, they never right themselves:" A traumatic event in one's life, an ice storm in relation to birch trees, will never cease to exist in the mind,

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