The Final Frontier
(A Literary Analysis on Robert Frost’s Poems and the Topic of Alienation)
Children struggle with this, teenagers struggle with this, adults struggle with this, and as a whole, society struggles with this.What is “this” you may ask? Alienation. Alienation is the act of being isolated from a group in which someone belongs. There are many instances where people are in situations where they are surround by people, yet feel entirely alone, though in that circumstance, they shouldn’t feel alone at all! Robert Frost was a poet in the 20th century who wrote several poems, all about alienation. In three of Frost’s poems, there are three different types of alienation that are presented.
To begin, in the short poem Mending Wall, alienation is presented in the title of the poem. Wall. Walls are created to divide people, not to bring people together. And in dividing humans, isolation occurs. Frost wrote, “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out”(Lines 32-33). The unfortunate part of that statement is that he questioned the building of the wall too late. The wall had already been built, and the people on both sides had become isolated from one another. “We build too many walls, and not enough bridges.” Sadly, that is true. Society is too busy building up their walls, they never stop to think about the purpose of doing so, or how to potentially tear them down. It is my belief that if we stop building the walls and begin to question
Consider sitting in your high school with multiple different groups of people around. You hear numerous conversations coming from every direction and laughter filling the halls, but you are left standing in the hallway alone, feeling outcast, because you have no connection with those people. Having desolate feelings comes in response to this situation, and overall, it takes away from that sense of belonging. The unspoken rules present in these groups are responsible for the loss of belonging. People that do not fit the requirements within the rules often find themselves feeling as though they are outcasts in society. Individually, they will perceive themselves to be outsiders without a belonging in the social order because their traits do not match the desired ones in society. Additionally, the people in each specific group will begin to exclude the said outcasts because they do not belong in the clique. As a result, social events and conversations become more exclusive to those who fit the unspoken rules. This unfortunately can lead to bullying, for the exclusive people will make the outsiders feel unwelcomed and criticized. One who does not “fit in” with others will find themselves feeling insecure about their life and role in the community. Therefore, the unspoken rules of society affect each individual’s sense of belonging in both a positive and negative
Robert Frost’s approach to human isolation is always an interesting exploration. His poem of desertion and neglect paired with eternal hopefulness ignite the reader in his poem “The Census-Taker.” All of the elements of a Frost poem are in this particular poem. “The Census-Taker” must be from an earlier time in Frost’s career because the poem is written in an open, free verse similar to the style of his earlier 20th century poetry like “Mending Wall” and “After Apple-Picking.” Also, the language lacks the sophisticated word selection a reader of poetry might find in Wallace Stevens and instead uses simplicity to
In his poem 'Mending Wall', Robert Frost presents to us the thoughts of barriers linking people, communication, friendship and the sense of security people gain from barriers. His messages are conveyed using poetic techniques such as imagery, structure and humor, revealing a complex side of the poem as well as achieving an overall light-hearted effect. Robert Frost has cleverly intertwined both a literal and metaphoric meaning into the poem, using the mending of a tangible wall as a symbolic representation of the barriers that separate the neighbors in their friendship.
“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost, the fifty-six line lyric poem gives off a sarcastic tone that expresses impatience with his neighbor and the “wall.” The poem focuses on a theme of separation, the necessity of boundaries and the illusory arguments used to annihilate them.
In the world today there are more teens that are isolated by alienation than in any other time period. People are judged and later on isolated by characteristics of themselves that they can not change. When people get isolated they began to distance themselves from others and the alienation becomes worse. In the short story, “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses isolation to show that in society people are alienated because of gender, race, and class.
Alienation can be more hurtful than any physical harm. It renders feelings of isolation and loneliness. Estrangement by your community confuses your ego and sense of self and leaves you wondering, “where do I belong?” Alienation and its effects were appropriately personified in both the late Leanita McClain and fictional character Arnold Spirit Jr. from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian.
Separation hurts, by choice or by force the detachment from anything obtainable to others is deleterious to one's outlook on life. This is because they feel a sense of becoming claustrophobic in the idea of a life that will always be shadowed by a glass ceiling, and that context is what is depicted in the play “Fences” as the characters experience their own barriers, and the fires kindled as they attempt to cope with them.
Isolation is the feeling of being unable to experience shared meaning and belonging. The feeling of being unable to experience shared meaning is a major source of psychological distress.
Robert Frost’s poem “Out, Out –“ is about a boy who has his arm sawed off during work and asks his sister not to let the doctor amputate his arm, he then realizes he’s lost too much blood and then dies while doctors try to save him. After his death everyone else continues on with their work and lives. Frost uses a lot of end-stopped lines, enjambment, repetition and personification among others in his lines of poetry.
Robert Frost's "The Mending Wall" is a comment on the nature of our society. In this poem, Frost examines the way in which we interact with one another and how we function as a whole. For Frost, the world is often one of isolation. Man has difficulty communicating and relating to one another. As a result, we have a tendency to shut ourselves off from others. In the absence of effective communication, we play the foolish game of avoiding any meaningful contact with others in order to gain privacy.
Similar to “Acquainted with the Night,” isolation is a major theme in “Mending Wall.” In “Mending Wall,” there are two characters: the speaker and the neighbor. The two characters have two different opinions on what make a “good neighbor.” The neighbor views walls as a crucial object in
In Robert Frost’s poem “Out, Out” an overwhelming theme of agony can be sensed as
Robert Frost tells a disturbing story in 'Out, Out, --', in which a little boy loses his life. The title of the poem leaves the reader to substitute the last word of the title, which some would assume would be out because of the repetition. The title is referring to the boy exiting the living world. Frost drags the reader's mind into the poem with the imagistic description of the tools and atmosphere the little boy is surrounded by.
However there is also a separation or segregation. In addition to the separation of the two men, Frost contrasts his “wall” of separation with the idea of segregation in our society. He uses this “wall” to display a separation between people in the current social climate. Lastly, there is the recurring idea that the wall should not be there. “We do not need the wall” This sentence implies that the wall separating us as people, needs to
In Roberts, Mending Wall, he expresses the alienation within our society. This story was and is very controversial throughout history. Written in 1914, it became widely known for its connection with racism and segregation. In 1960, Frost was asked to read it for President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. In JFK’s inauguration speech, he declared, “We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom”(Kennedy), which shows how he felt about segregation. This created a skirmish throughout the U.S., because this poem was so controversial. The poem, which was a memory when Frost was a young boy, consists of him walking the line. Walking the line means picking up rocks that had falling from the ice melting, recreating the fence between you and your neighbor. Frost suggests alienation in this story by using symbolism of the lines between African Americans and white folk. In the poem he asks the question, “Why do they make good neighbors”(line 30)? An interpretation of this line is that he is asking the question, ‘why do we have these lines between our people? There is no reasons to have these lines separating us?’. The poem suggests that we get into routines and then never break them because we have done them for generations. Frost challenges this, asking questions that are very hard to answer.