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Robert Frost takes our imaginations to a journey through wintertime with
his two poems "Desert Places" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". Frost
comes from a New England background and these two poems reflect the beautiful
scenery that is present in that part of the country. Even though these poems
both have winter settings they contain very different tones. One has a feeling
of depressing loneliness and the other a feeling of welcome solitude. They show
how the same setting can have totally different impacts on a person depending on
their mindset at the time. These poems are both made up of simple stanzas and
diction but they are not simple poems.
In the poem "Desert Places" the speaker is a man who is traveling
through the countryside on a beautiful winter eventing. He is completely
surrounded with feelings of loneliness. The speaker views a snow covered field
as a deserted place. "A blanker whiteness of benighted snow/ With no expression,
nothing to express". Whiteness and blankness are two key ideas in this poem.
The white sybolizes open and empty spaces. The snow is a white blanket that
covers up everything living. The blankness sybolizes the emptyness that the
speaker feels. To him there is nothing else around except for the unfeeling snow
and his lonely thoughts.
The speaker in this poem is jealous of the woods. "The woods around it
have it - it is theirs." The woods symbolizes people and society. They have
something that belongs to them, something to feel a part of. The woods has its
place in nature and it is also a part of a bigger picture. The speaker is so
alone inside that he feels that he is not a part of anything. Nature has a way
of bringing all of her parts together to act as one. Even the animals are a
part of this wintery scene. "All animals are smothered in their lairs,/ I am
too absent-spirited to count". The snow throws its blanket of whiteness over
everything and to him it is a feeling of numbness.
"The loneliness includes me unawares". The speaker has lost his
enthusiasm for life. He can not express his feelings easily because of this
feeling of numbness. The speaker is also in denial about feeling alone. He is
at a stage where he just does not care about too much and he is feeling a bit
paranoid. "They cannot scare me with their empty space." He is saying who cares
how I feel, I do not need anyone else. "I have in me so much nearer home/ To
scare myself with my own desert places". The speaker was starting to realize
that he had shut himself off to the world. He recognized that this winter place
was like his life. He had let depression and loneliness creep into his life and
totally ...
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