An Inevitable Mix of Life and Death in Frosts Poems - Essay Example

An Inevitable Mix of Life and Death in Frost’s Poems Robert Lee Frost was an American poet who was regarded for his real depictions of rural life. In most of his poems, he takes our imaginations to a journey of beautiful sceneries as well as gleam lessons of life. Frost wrote many poems, but in this paper, we examine the similarity between three poems: Desert Place, Acquainted with the Night, and Designs. This essay examines how Frost depicted the world, in his three poems, as having an inevitable mix of life and death.

The first poem is titled Acquainted with the Night (DiYanni 972). The poem is set in an urban place at night, a fact revealed when he says, “I have out-walked the furthest city light” (Line 3). The symbols of darkness (night) and light are relevant in the poem as they show the two sides of life as seen by the poet. They represent the life’s paradoxical mix which is further echoed by the luminary clock, which proclaims that both life and death is “…neither wrong nor right” (line 13).

In the poem Design (DiYanni 975), this mix is represented by the description of three living thing: the spider, the flower and the moth. The speaker says that they are “Assorted characters of death…” (line 4). The assorted creatures are white by coincidence, and they are designed to fit the theme. Although the three creatures are white, which depicts some hope; they represent destruction in a food chain. In the poem Desert Places (DiYanni 976), we get the picture that life and death are inseparable phenomena.

The hopelessness and bleakness of life is seen as the speaker sees “Snow falling and night falling fast…” (line 1). Snow is a symbol of life and night is a sign of death, hopelessness. To the poet, there is less hope than hopelessness in life. This can be seen as the poet understands that life itself is a paradoxical mix and human beings are prey to life’s predestinations and a creative design. In the poem Acquainted with the Night, although most people live in urban places, the speaker is lonely and depressed in the urban city.

In the poem Design, although a white flower is where a moth can camouflage for security it is where death, represented by the white spider, resides. In the poem Desert Places, the speaker gets in the snowy field expecting to find life, but he gets blankness, hopelessness and bareness. The three poems agree that sometimes innocence is deceitful and destruction, depression and hopelessness are found in it. In Acquainted with the Night, the speaker is a lonely person, and he walks at night. This shows Frost’s view of life as a journey of pessimistic pursuits full of darkness and loneliness.

This is shown in the poem Design where the safest place turns out to be a death trap for the moth, and in Desert Places where the speaker finds himself unexpectedly in the midst of bleakness and blankness. The three poems agree in conformity to death, bleakness, and hopelessness. In conclusion, Frost uses the three poems to emphasize the fact that life is about inevitable fate. Human beings have to be acquainted with the fate; they have no control of their fate because the fate is designed.

This has left life in the hands of circumstances where, as in a desert, seasons determine which weeds and stubble to survive and which one to succumb to fate. Period! Works Cited DiYanni, Robert. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 6th ed. Boston: Thomson, 2006. Print.