Nature
Imagery of Robert Frost as Metaphor for Social Burdens
By
Scott Chastain
The poetry of Robert Frost often embraces themes of nature.
This fact may lead a reader to quickly assume that Frost simply loved
nature, and thus wrote about it. While
I do not dispute that Frost may have felt a deep connection to the natural
world, especially of his New England, I think that to assume that this is where
Frost’s nature poetry ends may be premature.
If one inspects these poems, one can extract a subtle attempt by Frost to
express his contempt for various social institutions, particularly, the burdens
society imposes on the individual. To
demonstrate this, I will examine four poems by Frost and attempt to clearly
expose this contempt.
“Birches,” is a typical example of the use of nature imagery to
convey contempt for the pressure of social life.
While Frost doesn’t specify exactly which burden he is
targeting, one can piece together enough evidence from various parts of the poem
to extrapolate Frost’s meaning.
Much of the language in “Birches” is laced with words indicating a
burden. ‘…Often you have seen
them / Loaded with ice… Such heaps of broken glass to sweep
away…They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, /
though once they are bowed / So low for long, …It’s when I’m weary
of considerations, …’ (italics
mine). Clearly, these words suggest a heavy load.
But do they relate to humanity, or are they simply words describing the
actual ice bending the birches to the ground?
I think the former, relying on other words that Frost employs to indicate
that he is relating the two kinds of loads that birches suffer with life itself.
After reminiscing about going back to his childhood days of swinging on
birches, Frost relates, ‘And life is too much like a pathless wood / Where
your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs / Broken across it, and one eye is
weeping…’ This by itself, and Frost’s later wish that he could leave
earth awhile before needing to return, do suggest that the loads of the birches
are imposed by life, but do they really suggest that society is the
factor of life which is responsible?
That society is responsible is less clear, but evident nonetheless.
Frost tells us what the boy is doing when he decides to make play of
bending birches, ‘As he went out to fetch the cows -’
This indicates the boy had some responsibilities to tend to,
but instead of working at his chores, shirked them for a moment’s respite to
play at swinging on the birch trees (which are not permanently bent, unlike
the damage of the ice storms). This
small line suggests what Frost wishes to return to - escaping his chores.
His duties. The final line
of the poem, ‘One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.’ is strongly
suggestive that the ice storm is also a metaphor for some chore that probably should
be shirked. Chores that bend
the birch (or us) permanently, although we are left to fill in which chore our
society could be without. Jury duty? War?
Taxation? It isn’t really
clear. What is clear is that it is
some chore that isn’t needful for life itself (you don’t die if you don’t
bring back the cows!), which means it isn’t a chore imposed on us by simply
being alive (like seeking food), but instead a chore imposed by other people
(the father of the birch-swinger, and vicariously, other social authorities).
These sorts of chores bend a person to the ground, keep him low, and
there is no recovery.
‘The Sound of Trees’ deals with another form of social burdening
that, while not as devastating as the sort suggested of in ‘Birches,’ is no
less tiresome. Here, I believe,
Frost discusses the social burden of socializing itself.
“I wonder about the trees / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise
of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?” Considering how often Frost remarks about trees positively,
it seems out of character for him to comment that the sounds of trees are
annoying in and of themselves (e.g., ‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep‘
from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”).
However, considering that these trees are “close to our dwelling
place” and how later in the poem he comments how these trees often speak of
leaving, but never move, we can easily infer that the “trees” are metaphors
for our human neighbors.
‘They are that that talks of going / But never gets away; / And that
talks no less for knowing, / As it grows wiser and older, / That now it means to
stay.’ These lines infer that the
people grow old and become somewhat wiser.
They have never left, only to realize their empty claims amounted to
nothing. The suggestion of wise and
older people continuing in their senseless banter is further affirmed when the
narrator suggests that he will leave those with ‘The white clouds over them
on.’ I believe this is a
reference to the white hair of the elderly!
‘I shall have less to say, / But I shall be gone.’
This seems to suggest that it is better to do, than to just jibber on
about what you are not doing, but would like to.
This particular contempt, that for the social custom of yakking, appears
in various other Frost poems, such as “Ends,” “The Span of Life,” and
“An Empty Threat.” In any
event, it is clear that the narrator wishes to remove himself from the sounds of
those that he must ‘suffer them by the day.’
The next selection is a bit more controversial, once decoded.
“The Cow in Apple Time” seems to be a commentary on the existence of
gender roles in society, and more specifically, the rejection by women of their
role as homemakers. It is interesting that this poem makes no comment as to the
rightness or wrongness of women rejecting her ‘pasture withering to the
root,’ this poem only observes the phenomena as it occurs. While my interpretation may be somewhat suggestive, and open
to attack for comparing women to cows, I think I can make my point plain.
‘Something inspires the only cow of late…’
The opening line not only indicates a minority view, but also a recent
development.. ‘of late.’ ‘To
make no more of a wall than an open gate, / And think no more of wall-builders
than fools.’ This line depicts a
bursting through of gender-barriers, and a scorn for those who construct them.
‘Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools / A cider syrup.
Having tasted fruit, / She scorns a pasture withering to the root.’
Here we clearly see that she has tasted of the finer things in life, such
as freedom, equality, and power, and now rejects the home-front and its
meager social status. ‘The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten. / She
leaves them bitten when she has to fly.’
These lines refer to her rejection of her husband.
“Windfall” indicates fruit which has been loosed by the wind and
dropped onto the ground, although it may also convey “windbag” or a person
who talks too much, such as a boisterous husband might be. The image of the apple/husband ‘spiked with stubble’
evokes the image of an unshaved husband, or a lower-class man who may tend
towards berating his wife (possibly what is meant by worm-eaten here… he has
something vile eating at him). When
she ‘has to fly,’ or leave him to be an independent women… he is left
‘bitten,’ or hurt. ‘She
bellows on a knoll against the sky. /
Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.’
Clearly this indicates the protests that seem to be going unheard, as if
they were offered to the sky. The
last line shows a rejection of child-rearing, and the traditional role of the
mother.
The final poem I shall look at is one of Frost’s more famous ones,
“Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening.”
This poem has been looked at many times, with various interpretations. One of these interpretations even suggested the narrator was
Santa Claus! (Meyer 799).
My interpretation is far less risqué, but does attempt to show that this
poem is a protest to the social burdens placed on us by our families.
‘The darkest evening of the year,’ is the Winter Solstice, which
usually falls on December 21 or 22, just before Christmas.
It isn’t too difficult to imagine our narrator as traveling into the
local village from his farmstead to purchase Christmas presents for his
children. ‘Whose woods these are
I think I know. /
His house is in the village though;… ’
These two lines tell us that the narrator himself does not live in the
village. ‘He will not see me
stopping here / To watch his woods fill up with snow.’
Not only does the narrator not live in the village, he is quite a
distance from it. Here we also see a suggestion that the narrator doesn’t
think much of village ways, by knowingly trespassing on the property.
‘My little horse must think it queer / To stop without a farmhouse near
/ Between the woods and frozen lake / The darkest evening of the year.’
Again, it is the Winter Solstice, and stopping in the middle of the woods
isn’t customary for our narrator, as he feels his horse must be wondering why
he is behaving so oddly. ‘He
gives his harness bells a shake / To ask if there is some mistake. / The only
other sound’s the sweep of easy wind and downy flake.’
This sets a quiet mood of solitude and meditation, distant from the
distractions of mankind. Easy and
downy both suggest that the snowy woods are offering some comfort to our
traveler, who in turn may be weary from his journey.
‘The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, / But I have promises to keep, /
And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep.’
The use of ‘lovely, dark, and deep,’ suggests to us the narrator’s
mood. He is having some dark
thoughts, somewhere in his mind, and perhaps these thoughts are not quite
distasteful, maybe even enjoyable. Thoughts about simply abandoning his family and “getting
away from it all” perhaps? In any
event, we know that he has some obligation to fulfill, some promises to keep.
Such as the promises made to children that they would have a nice
Christmas? Again we empathize with
his exhaustion by the repetition of the last line:
‘miles to go before I sleep.’
It isn’t a stretch of the imagination to place oneself in that sleigh,
with a heavy burden of having to provide gifts for the children, which you
possibly have no money to buy. Christmas
is almost upon you, and you find yourself in a sheltered wood, far from anyone
else. To just rest, to stop, and to
watch the quiet gentle flakes falling from heaven, possibly giving you a
moment’s respite against this pressure of provision, and to breathe.
Perhaps to think, to contemplate… what if I just left and never
returned???
These four poems are not exhaustive as far as Frost’s use of nature
poetry to convey his contempt for social burdening.
Of course he is not limited to using nature poetry in this sense, or from
using nature poetry to convey other messages.
A deeply heartfelt man, Robert Frost touches all of us in one way or
another. He expands our humaneness
and reminds of things we would have rather left unchecked.
Perhaps we should all be swingers of birches, uproot ourselves a bit, and
join the cow in silent reverie in a snowy wood?
It wouldn’t hurt us, and might just do us good!
Works Cited:
Coursen, Herbert R., Jr. “A Parodic Interpretation of ‘Stopping by Woods on a
Snowy Evening.’” The
Compact
Bedford Introduction to Literature. 6th
ed. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin’s,
2003. 799.
Frost, Robert. The
Poetry of Robert Frost. Ed.
Edward Connery Lathem. New York:
Henry Holt & Co.
1979.
