Analysis of Robert Frosts The Span of a Life - Essay Example

The poem is developed through an economy of words, starting with one line and ending abruptly with the next. The message, however, can be examined for many elemental variations on themes on the issue of the memory. The first line shows the dog turning back, his bark coming from a stationary place, but looking back as if he is looking behind him to his past (Frost 103). In this poem, the space from the pup to the bark is filled with the memories that make up the span of a life. The poem is developed through an economy of words, starting with one line and ending abruptly with the next.

The message, however, can be examined for many elemental variations on themes on the issue of the memory. The first line shows the dog turning back, his bark coming from a stationary place, but looking back as if he is looking behind him to his past (Frost 103). In this poem, the space from the pup to the bark is filled with the memories that make up the span of a life.  The second element is the generation of life. The man and the dog both belong to a period of time in which they have lived out years that puts them nearer the end of their life than the beginning.

A term that can be discussed in reference to the generation of life is nostalgia. The concept of nostalgia is also hinted at as the narrator uses the word pup, a reference that has a sentimental tone and can be interpreted to provide an intimacy with the dog. The dog as a symbol more than likely refers to the narrator, the nostalgia that he confers on the dog actually coming from the memories that he has of his own life. Bloom discusses the concept of nostalgia as it is referenced in a human and a non-human figurative space.

The human sense of nostalgia is conveyed through the use of the non-human figure, the concept of memory. Bloom states that he must “liken it to a human sigh”, the non-human configuration of nostalgia in this case wrapped in his backward bark (Bloom 95). The poem has a finite space in which it communicates its message. According to Schleuter, in reading a piece of writing it is important to understand the temporal placement of the end of the work (Schleuter 86). This poem continues past its ending, a story unfolding through the imagination of the reader, past and present coming together as a story of the life of the dog, paralleling the life of the person who is reading the work.

Through the turn of the head to the back, the dog has indicated a space between his present, and the past that is alluded to by the narrator, suggesting the generation of life. Space in between is the span of life, a much longer story that slides between the first line and the last.