Frost Looks To Nature example essay topic

Foreword - A poet named frost The mark of a great poet is his ability to engage the reader so that they analyse their own lives. Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963) - an influential American poet often associated with rural New England - is brilliant at this and uses poetry as a platform for the expression of his own general ideology. Frost's belief that human society was often chaotic and stressful and that the meaning of life is elusive, has been promoted in his poetry. Frost looked to nature, whose undying beauty and simplicity did not force him into a strict, moulded society, but represented freedom from life and its constant stresses of family and work as a metaphor to show the stark comparison.

This ideology derives from Frost's childhood - where strict rules and punishments were a normal occurrence. When Frost's first poem was published professionally to rave reviews, he devoted himself entirely to his art by moving to England - where a combination of the natural beauty of the English farm life, sole determination, and pure talent made him one of the most recognisable figures in American history - inspiring this anthology - "Robert Frost - Breaking the Walls". Some of the famous poems included in this anthology consist of, "The Road Not Taken", "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening", "Mending Wall" and "After Apple Picking". . "The Road Not Taken" reflects Frost's opinion that society is stressful, as the speaker agonizes over a life decision represented by the division of a road.

"The Road Not Taken" involves 'life's choices', and can be directly related to Frost's own life and experiences. It begins with"; Two roads diverged in a yellow wood". The yellow woods are the first example of where Robert Frost has used nature as a means of expressing his feelings. These first two lines set the pessimistic theme of the poem as they tell the audience that Frost is now at the autumn (near end) of his life, and that he has a very hard choice to make. When Frost stopped at the fork in the road he looked down both of the paths to help him make his choice, but he found the ends of the paths to be intangible. The nature metaphor - shrubbery - obscured his view from seeing the consequences of this decision.

He becomes frustrated that he cannot find the meaning of life in nature - which he feels should hold the answers. The poem is a monologue of Frost's life and as the poem was published in 1916 it can be linked to the time when Frost and his family owned a farm in New Hampshire. The farm was failing badly and Frost was finding it hard to make the payments. He had to make the decision wether to battle on with the well worn path of struggling on with the farm hoping to recuperate his losses, or following one less worn - to move on and seek his fortunes elsewhere. Frost of course took the latter, deciding to go against the norms of society, which he seemed to find unjust yet he is still unsure if he has chosen the right path, thus the poem ends ambiguously, encouraging the audience to question their own lives. Frost's poetry often expresses his disenchantment with the pressures of society and the need to take time out, or rebel against these pressures is evident in "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening".

From the year 1899 onwards, when frost was working full time as a teacher and a farm hand, he decided to quit these well celebrated jobs and devote himself to the penniless existence of poetry writing (R.H. Win nick, web). Again using the metaphor nature, Frost relates his poem to this life experience. The stop in the snowy woods resembles the break from work and society that he decided to take. In the second stanza he mentions his horse; "My little horse must think it queer To stop... He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake " While the woods represent the mystery and excitement of nature - the poetry he could be writing, the freedom he never received in his early years, the horse becomes the symbol of the society that Frost came to hate. Society pressures him to get back to work, reminding him that he hasn't the time to be exploring the woods when there is work to be done.

By stopping the horse to appreciate the scenery he is fighting society's stranglehold and looking on towards more exciting potentials such as writing poetry full time. He invites the reader to question their own values and the meaning of their own life. Frost was not afraid to expose the chaotic societies of his time in Mending Wall, a poem that discusses East West Relations during the 1960's. The theme of the poem is to "let go of old fashioned values and beliefs and move on towards new goals and achievements".

Throughout the poem, Frost repetitively asks the same question 'what is the need for a wall?' The reply he gets from the man on the other side is; "Good fences make good neighbours". This old fashioned saying affects him deeply as he feels need to question the deep-rooted and unreasonable attitudes of his neighbours. Frost is speaking from an American point of view (as no text is neutral), and he talks of the relationship between Russia and America - how America is modernizing, while Russia is stuck to very old fashioned values, which causes conflict enough to build a wall between the two countries. Using again the allegory - nature, frost mentions the; "Something there is that doesn't love a wall". There is a force at hand that does not want a wall to be built between the two countries, and it forces the fortifications to crumble. In the end of the poem he finds that he can not dissuade his neighbour from letting the fence fall down but, in the search for his own meaning of life, he realise's that building walls between ourselves is not for the better, and he becomes infuriated and frustrated at society, inviting the reader to share his aggravation and query the need for their own walls.

Frost looks to nature, not humans, in his poem "After Apple Picking". It represents the search for the elusive meaning of life, where it is human nature to focus mainly on our failures to measure our own lives. In the first line of the first stanza it is written; "My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree, toward heaven still". This is not a ladder perse, but the divider between heaven and hell, heaven represented by the pointed spikes of the ladder, similar to church steeples, "between heaven and earth this apple picking goes on" - Shamus Harvey - poet. Robert Frost uses nature as a metaphor for choices - the apples he picked being good choices, but the apples he let fall were the bad. The poem focuses mainly on the bad choices that frost made and he could be speaking directly about his children who, it could be said, 'fell far from the tree.

' Three of his children died of disease; Elliot (1900), Elinor (three days after her own birth) and Marjorie (1934), and as a result his son Carol commits suicide with a deer-hunting rifle on October 9, 1940. (web) This poem is one written directly from the poet's heart. He is weary with his life and the choices he has been forced to make; "Of apple picking I am over-tired, of the great harvest myself desired". He cannot find the meaning of his life, and it remains always elusive because, as humans we are confined only to look at the bad choices we have made, something that Robert Frost sees, looking toward nature instead to help make sense of it all. Poetry is a lyrical way of expressing the writer's deepest emotions and connecting with the reader, engaging the audience to interna lise their own lives and find the meaning of life. Robert Frost became one of the greatest American poets because he was able to do this. His belief that human society was often chaotic and stressful and that the meaning of life is elusive, has been promoted in his poetry.

He looked to the metaphor - nature, whose undying beauty and simplicity did not force him into a strict, moulded society, but represented freedom from life and its constant stresses of family and work. Robert Frost's beliefs are reflected in the poems in this anthology, so read the following verse and find yourself questioning your own life and the meaning of it. Lose yourself in some of the best poems written by one of the best poets in the world. - The Author.