Literary Allusion In The Works Of Robert Frost's 'Design'

Robert Frost's Design Robert Frost outlines an ironic and disturbing situation involving a flower, a spider, and a moth in his poem "Design". The poem's text suggests the possibility of an absence of a god, but does no more than simply beg the question, for Frost's speaker does not offer the answer. By examining the events of the poem in the first stanza and the speaker's annotative second stanza, we

Ross Gay’s book Against Which, portrays his poetry to readers allowing them to gain understanding of the cruel world that one lives in. Moreover, the unusual brutalities that people are inevitable confronted with in life. The common denominators within Gay’s poems such as violence, love, fear, and loss allows the reader to visualize characters’ transformation within his poems. In a world of calamity, Gay has created poems that portray the corporal conforming to gender and sex but also human development. Using a reader-response criticism lens, I will be demonstrating my interpretation of Ross Gay’s poems and the meaning that I believe to be a common interpretation of his work. Within, Gay’s poems, “It Starts at Birth” and Angels Out of Reach” one is able to see a pattern of human transformation. By experiencing pain, love, loss, fear, and wisdom one is able to see Gay’s characters evolve through the narrators and readers gaze. In doing so, one is able to reflect on Gay’s poems and gain wisdom themselves.

Robert Frost wrote this poem in 1923. Frost in referencing creation from the perspective of a Christian. The poem is about creation and how creations evolves over time. Frost is an American poet from New England. He was very concerned with the current political climate. This piece is a collection from 20th century poetry.

In Robert Frost’s “Design,” written in 1922, the narrator laments the juxtaposition of life and death that he bears witness to when he sees a spider on a heal-all flower carrying the dead moth it has killed. He uses a modified Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, punctuation, repetition of rhyme and diction, repetition of anomaly, and repetition of the same rhyme in both the octave and the sestet, to convey that death is a question that cannot be answered and that the only solution, the only answer, is to continue to ponder over it. While it is a question that cannot be answered, it must be questioned anyway. He uses symbols he has drawn from in earlier works, as well as his experience playing with the form of the Petrarchan sonnet in the past, to help shed light on the importance of this.

In this poem the first literary element that Frost uses is imagery. The use of imagery gives his readers a deep

Throughout time, poets have explored the world by writing about nature and humanity. Writers contemplate beauty, relationships, cultural beliefs, and death. “Design” by Robert Frost, depicts a spider preparing to devour a moth. Through this natural illustration, “Humanity, according to Frost, is as unprotected as the moth on a flower and as dangerous as the spider” (Anderson). Marge Piercy portrays the effects cultural influences have upon a woman in “Barbie Doll”. Conforming to society’s beliefs about beauty, the woman dismembers offensive body parts, allowing others to mold her into a perfect Barbie Doll. Both poets explore the theme of humanity using the design of nature, imagery, and irony.

Robert Frost is one of the most widely-read and recognized poets of the twentieth century, if not all time. If his name is mentioned, it is usually followed by a reference to two roads diverged in a yellow wood and taking the one less traveled by. But lurking in the shadows of the yellow wood of Frost’s poetry are much deeper meanings than are immediately apparent. As the modern poet Billy Collins says in his “Introduction to Poetry”, in order to find the true meaning of a poem we must “…hold it up to the light/ like a color slide” instead of “…beating it with a hose/ to find out what it really means” (1-16). When Frost’s poems are held up to the light, it is revealed

Robert Frost wrote this poem in 1923, Frost is referencing creation from the perspective of a christian. The poem is about creation and how creation evolves over time. Frost is an American poet from New England. He was very concerned about the current political climate. This piece is a collection from 20th century poetry.

Robert Frost’s poetic techniques serve as his own “momentary stay against confusion,” or as a buffer against mortality and meaninglessness in several different ways; in the next few examples, I intend to prove this. Firstly, however, a little information about Robert Frost and his works must be provided in order to understand some references and information given.

In Robert Frost's "Mowing", Robert Frost uses many unique literary techniques to address complex reflections. "Mowing" examines the thoughts of a speaker that, while mowing some hay, believes that a scythe is whispering. As the speaker debates whether it is fantasy or reality, the overall theme of reality being the sane and comforting approach is developed through various stylistic techniques. As the reader initially reads "Mowing", an initial observation is Frost's use of repetition.

“The relationship between the energies of the inquiring mind that an intelligent reader brings to the poem and the poem’s refusal to yield a single comprehensive interpretation enacts vividly the everlasting intercourse between the human mind, with its instinct to organise and harmonise, and the baffling powers of the universe about it.”

The poem "Design" explores whether the events in nature are simply random occurrences or part of a larger plan by God, and if there's a force that dominates and controls our very existence. On that point both Jere K Huzzard and Everett Carter aggress on. They differ in their interpretations of the poem's ending and what they think Frost wanted to convey with his vague ending. Both agree that the last line of the poem was written in an undefined way with purpose on Frost's side. But each critic poses his own ideas regarding what is the meaning of that line. While Carter examines the whole poem in order to answer this question, Huzzard chose to focus only on the last two lines.

Robert Frost is known for his layering poetry that includes unique characters for the audience to enjoy. He, “always wants to reach for a more complicated vision, one arrived at after much pain, much “sucking up” of passive, reflected beauty” (Panini 235). This quote about Frost suggests that his writing flourishes in the face of uncomfortable subject matter, a quality most ordinary people do possess. However, Frost is not trying to steer the audience toward his way of thinking, he is simply telling us that the characters we sense in the text will have bold personalities, also known as persona. An illustration of this writing strategy is present in Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” from the 1928 collection, West-Running Brook. Here, Frost creates a good example of a Rubaiyat stanza that is broken into four sections totaling sixteen lines. From the moment we meet the narrator, we are aware that his persona is suspicious, from his inspections of the winter surrounding, to the focus on his odd behavior and the final reminder of a plan. What “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” deeply concerns is found in the fresh behaviors and subtle hints that the narrator presents to the reader. Due to Frost’s skillful delivery of narrator’s persona in this poem, the topic of suicidal thoughts is presented to the audience in an attempt to create awareness about this life threatening condition.

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words,” Robert Frost once said. As is made fairly obvious by this quote, Frost was an adroit thinker. It seems like he spent much of his life thinking about the little things. He often pondered the meaning and symbolism of things he found in nature. Many readers find Robert Frost’s poems to be straightforward, yet his work contains deeper layers of complexity beneath the surface. These deeper layers of complexity can be clearly seen in his poems “ The Road Not Taken”, “Fire and Ice”, and “Birches”.

     A very interesting point regarding Frost’s relationship with nature is that he views it with ambiguity. Most assume that Frost is a nature lover; however, while this is true in part, Frost also views nature as having the capability of being destructive. Lynen speaks of this duality by saying, “You cannot have one without the other: love of natural beauty and horror at the remoteness and indifference of the physical world are not opposites but different aspects of the same view” (7). On speaking of Frost’s dualistic view of nature, Phillip L. Gerber states, “For nature is hard as she is soft, she can destroy and thwart, disappoint, frustrate, and batter” (132). Robert Frost views nature as an ‘alien force capable of destroying man’, but on the flip side, he also views “man’s struggle with nature as a heroic battle” (quoted in Thompson).