Desire and Responsibility

in Robert Frosts Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

BY APRIL ROSE FALE
Four-time Pulitzer prizewinning poet Robert Frost said of a poem, Read it over a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness (Frost). To some, these words were Frosts self-prophecy; to others, they were primarily his poetic principle. In any case, Frosts poems did keep their freshness despite numerous turnings by critics. Among these poems is Frosts Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, the theme of which turned out to be more delightfully complex than what meets the superficial eye. A theme is defined as an intellectually apprehensible meaning inherent and implicit in a work; however, it must also take into account all the pertinent elements in the poem (Di Yanni 841). For example, it would be distortive to assert that the theme of Theodore Roethkes My Papas Waltz is the childs terror of his father because it oversimplifies the speakers assorted reactions to father and sons bedtime roughhousing. In the same way, Robert Frosts Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening cannot have one single theme that will satisfactorily encompass the entirety of the poem. Indeed, critics have coaxed from this particular Frost poem an interesting variety of interpretations, ranging from the poem being concerned with ownership to merely a revel in the felicities of language with no larger, more impressive meaning (Poirier; Pritchard). Upon looking at Robert Frosts life, poetic style, and the elements of the poem in question, instead of one umbrella theme, my analysis produced two: the necessity for man to face his responsibilities, which in turn cannot be separated from the subtheme of mans pursuit of his own desires. Upon initial reading, Stopping by Woods appears to be a poem about a man stopping amidst a wooded area to appreciate nature. While this is not entirely true, the significance of the speakers simple action towards building the poems conclusion cannot be disregarded. Frost hints at the significance of the speakers experience of stopping by woods on a snowy evening by devoting three stanzas and a verse to its details, even though in the end it is not the main point. Also, consider how the opening verse inverts traditional sentence structure (Whose woods these are / I think I know instead of the normal I think I know whose woods these are). This inversion immediately grants the reader a view from behind the speakers own eyes, giving the woods the honor of the first bit of attention (DiYanni 811). The speakers desire to stay and contemplate the loveliness of nature is a situational example of the larger theme of man being drawn to his own desires. Bestowing ample limelight on this theme sets the stage for the last concluding lines. Towards the end stanzas, the woods take on a more hypnotic character (easy wind and downy flakelovely, dark, and deep), amplifying the seductive power of mans personal desires against which resistance is elevated from simple sacrifice to a noble, heroic act (Poirier).

The first three stanzas are also riddled with imagery, rich in symbolic meaning that both absorb the readers attention and allude subtly to factors outside of the poem. For example, the image of the woods in the first stanza conjures danger, fear of losing ones way, or confusion amidst a maze of obscure paths. This could very well point to Frosts own predicament of choosing paths or making strike-in-the-dark decisions like moving his family to England in pursuit of poetic recognition. Frozen lake brings to mind a deceptive calmness: an image of surface calm masking a continuous churning underneath. This is a rough reference to Frost himself: how he prefers to project a more congenial, folksy side and how he refused to read his darker, more skeptical poems in public (Di Yanni 954). Darkest evening brings to mind a tragedy, a devastating occurrence, or the ending of life that may mean the terrible misfortunes within Frosts own family. Such richly connotative words stall the reader, sinking him with the poems persona in his desires and ensuring an increased jolting effect when the speaker finally decides to leave his desires and attend to his responsibilities. However, these first three stanzas are secondary to the last three verses of the poem, as they merely lay the basis for the importance of the concluding theme. Note, for example, that although the first stanzas detail the speakers stopping by woods experience, they each contain a subtle tension, a nagging uneasiness at the speakers act of stopping. In the first stanza, for instance, the speaker expresses uncertainty as to the owner of the woods. Going further, he seems to reassure himself that the owner was not around (his house is in the village though) to see [the speaker] stopping here. In the second stanza, the speaker projects his own sentiments to his little horse, stating that the beast must think it queer/ To stop without a farmhouse near, although the horse obviously has no say over the matter. Between the wood and frozen lake/ The darkest evening of the year further complicates the line of reasoning, which, to be charitable, is rather uncharacteristic of a horse. The third stanza further reveals the speakers discomfort about stopping, again through the horse who gives his harness bells a shake/ To ask if there is some mistake. It is also interesting to note that the concluding stanza summarized the three whole stanzas about appreciation of nature in a single verse (The woods are lovely, dark and deep), then devoted the remaining three verses to a conclusion that made no mention of nature at all. These three final verses address the question, What is the point?. If the poem consisted purely of a mans nostalgic contemplation of a beautiful bunch of trees smothered with snow, it would be utterly pointless. The double theme of pursuing personal desires and facing responsibilities are also congruent to the life and career of Robert Frost. Frosts desire of being a critically and popularly acclaimed poet, for instance, was evident but conflicts with the responsibility of sustaining his family. He had a wife and four children to feed. He was also suffering from obscurity as a poet and rejection as he sought to publish his work because American publishers paid him no heed. This compelled Frost to sell his farm in Derry, New Hampshire and move to England with his family in search of poetic recognition (Di Yanni 953). This was seen as a huge gamble, again implying conflict between Frosts own desires and familial responsibilities. Back to Stopping by Woods, the speakers act of stopping and appreciating nature and the subsequent reminder of promises to keep mirrors how Frost found time for his poetry, but still had to return to the reality of doing double jobs to foot the bill: he taught at the Pinkerton Academy, and farmed his land at the same time (Ariel). The speaker in the poem evidently reveled in contemplating the beauty of the woods, as Frost must revel at fashioning his

poems, but both eventually had to attend to their earthly duties. Another reflection of Frosts life in the poem was the speakers yearning for a piece of quiet in an uninhabited corner of an otherwise draining, demanding world. Similarly, Frost experienced such tormenting events that collectively made for a tumultuous life. He suffered gravely from the death of his wife Elinor and three of his children. He was also subjected to the tragic experience of seeing his sister and his own daughter succumb to mental illness (Di Yanni 954). Such misfortunes warranted a need for escape (into his poetry or into the woods), a retreat into a quiet pocket of time and space, as did the speaker in Stopping by Woods. In the face of these grievous events, death may have seemed a much kinder option, which may explain the speakers allusion to death or ultimate rest with the ending couplet. The repetition of And miles to go before I sleep, while a reinforcement of the idea that he has other responsibilities to attend to, also indicates a longing for peace, the ultimate form of which is worldly death. In Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost produced a poem resembling its imagery of the frozen lake: on the surface, everything is calm and uncomplicated, but below the ice flow the themes of desires indulged and responsibilities faced. In public readings, Frost may have made fun of efforts to draw out deeper meaning from his poems, but until today he is still known as the master of concealment (Di Yanni 956). Using descriptive realism, he addresses universal motifs found in ordinary surroundings and actions. Frost averred that a poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom (Frost). In Stopping by Woods, he lived true to his claim: we began by sharing the speakers sensitive, albeit uneasy, delight at indulging his desire, contemplating the beauty of the dark woods, and ended with a pearl of wisdom: as the voice in Frosts poem has promises to keep, at the end of the day, we all need to snap out of our revelries, kick the side of our horses and continue the remaining miles of the journey until the time we can finally lay our heads to sleep.

Works Cited Ariel: A Readers Interactive Exploration of Literature . CD-ROM. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004. Di Yanni, Robert. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007. Frost, Robert. From The Figure a Poem Makes. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry and Drama. Ed. Emily Barrose. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007. 983-984. Poirier, Richard. On Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry and Drama. Ed. Emily Barrose. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007. 986-987. Pritchard, William. On Stopping by Woods. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry and Drama. Ed. Emily Barrose. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007. 985-986.