Aidan King

Robert Frost and Dorianne Laux

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” vs “The Life of Trees”

            Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” displays a simple conflict: the battle of a traveler’s attraction to the woods and a responsibility he must keep elsewhere. “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, // But I have promises to keep,” reads Frost (lines 13 and 14). The poem is rooted strongly in the many seductive qualities that nature has, how those qualities can affect rational decision-making.

            Frost uses soft, beautiful images to convey the attraction of the woods. Phrases like “easy wind and downy snow” and descriptions that detail the silence and solitude of the location draw the reader in as much as the traveler. We’re drawn to the same harmonious, peaceful place. We want the traveler to explore more. We want the traveler to venture into the woods, to discover and show us the infinite beauty of it all.

            The woods can be seen as a doorway to freedom for the traveler. A means of escaping responsibilities and obligations. Those responsibilities are the products of society; a society he wants to be rid of. He sees this part of the woods as a crossroads. In one direction lies the fulfillment of his “promises to keep” and “miles to go before I sleep” (15). In the other direction, he is faced with the lovely, dark, and deep woods. In this poem, society, the village, duty, responsibility – they all represent the same thing. A tiring task that the rider must accomplish, but for what reason, that much is unclear. Society would frown upon the rider’s decision to stop in the woods. With important things to do, it would be disappointing and he would be letting someone – or many people down. Frost uses the traveler’s horse to show this.
“My little horse must think it queer // to stop without a farmhouse near” (5/6)
Those horse – and society would frown upon his decision to stay.

The fact that it takes place in the middle of the winter makes his decision one of life and death, as well. There is no shelter, no warmth, no place to rest. If he journeys into the woods, he may very well succumb to the cold if he rests for too long. This would in turn rid him of his responsibilities, though. He would reach an ultimatum. The burden would be lifted, but only if his willpower is broken down enough. This pulling force, although it originates from the calm, beautiful forest, has a sense of evil to it. It is “The darkest evening of the year” (8). The word “dark” can be interpreted as both “not light” and “evil.” This darkness, the mysterious force of the forest corrupts his rationale. It draws him to what may ultimately be his frigid death. At the very least, it pulls him away from his duties. The mystery of the woods, the hidden beauty that lies behind the trees is what draws the traveler and the reader further and further in, like a siren call luring sailors to their doom.

Dorianne Laux unravels this mystery in her poem “The Life of Trees.” The poem draws a line between human life and arboreal life, represented by the societal obligations and the alluring qualities of the woods in Frost’s poem.

“I want to sleep // and dream the life of trees, beings // from the muted world who care nothing // for Money, Politics, Power, // Will or Right, who want little from the night” (12-16).

These lines explain the mysterious attraction that the woods have on Frost’s traveler, and the things that make them different from society. Frost, like Laux, wants to be a part of the trees. He wants to forget about the money, politics, and power of society. He wants to forget about all the complexities of humanity that emerge within civilization. The trees represent a free existence, while humanity represents an enslaved existence, one ruled by monotonous tasks and rules.

Laux’s final line, “breathe, and breathe again” (46) captures the desire for freedom perfectly. Breathing is necessary for life. To breathe is to live, and Laux envies that quality that the trees have. No responsibility, no fear.

“Sun. Rain. Snow. Wind. They fear // Nothing but the Hurricane, and Fire,” (30/31).

The trees just exist, like the woods that the traveler passes by. They remain there in harmony, separated from the world around them. Frost’s rider craves for this utter freedom as well. He envies that life.

Frost depicts a scene in which the appeal of peaceful and mysterious woods tempts the lonesome traveler. The reader doesn’t know exactly what it is about the forest that draws us in. Only the fact that the dark, snow-covered woods are silent, peaceful, and away from society. In her poem, Laux makes sense of the forest. She describes the envious qualities of the trees. The qualities that don’t exist with humans in society. These traits can only be accomplished by being in nature, which is the core of Frost’s traveler’s desires. Society is a dreary place; one that confines its inhabitants. Nature, in its purest form, allows for near-infinite freedom. It is an enviable destination, at the very least. 

Saadi once proclaimed, “Improve time in the present; for opportunity is precious, and time is a sword.” The mortality of life remains fragile and slowly travels to its conclusion. In Robert Frost’s poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” biblical allusion and colorful diction to illustrate the importance of taking advantage of opportunity before time betrays the body.

            Frost introduces biblical allusion when he mentions “Eden.”  This obviously refers to the book of Genesis and the temptation of Eve by Satan. Frost describes the perfection of “Eden” as “gold,” but also states that the gold provides itself as the “hardest hue to hold.” The difficulty that comes from this newfound Earth, an opportunity, limns the ease by which opportunities pass. Frost quotes the beginning of the Earth as “dawn”, yet states that Earth “goes down to day.” This shows the failure of Adam and Eve to grasp the enormous opportunity given, and Frost utilizes the failure in his poem to portray the importance of grasping every opportunity.

            Aside from biblical allusion, Frost utilizes diction to paint a picture in the reader’s mind and express a deeper meaning of taking every chance given. The color gold holds the connotation of wealth, the sun, and good. Frost’s use of the color to describe the opportunity of creating a perfect humanity delineates the wealth of knowledge and benefits, which come from taking opportunities. Moreover, Frost describes the brevity of opportunity with his famous conclusion of, “Nothing gold can stay.” Frost also describes the first attempts at grasping humanity as a “flower.” Flowers bloom into beautiful creations, and Frost shows the world that opportunities possess the ability to metamorphous into a beautiful creation and lend humanity with valuable data.

            In the infamous words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Robert Frost concurs with Bueller and encourages all to embrace opportunity as it comes. People wait, time does not.

                                                  ” Can one fall in love more then once?”                                 

“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”  (Robert Frost).

I am more then sure that all of us have walked on that familiar path called
“Love Path”, when we all are either in our teens or at the ripe age of our youth we more then often tend to fall for this “Love Trap” where you want to help yourself by making a U –turn in ones life but feel helpless to do so not because you are forced not to take such a step but in fact your emotions for that someone are so strong and intense that you just cannot stop loving that particular person. No matter how many rejections you get from him/her how many cold –shoulders you get to see in return, you end up sticking to your guns resulting in do or die stage.

But how about giving a slight twist to this topic of mine, what do you think about the ones who have been married broken of with either their spouse, fiancé or let’s say a steady relationship in which you died for that person but in return you got only failure and no love from the other side?
The typical thing takes place you break up / get divorced or he/she becomes a forgotten story for you as a result making you so bitter in return that you end up vowing to yourself or in front of your loved one “ I WILL NEVER FALL IN LOVE AGAIN EVER”.

Many years pass by you either tend to swing on either side of the fence meaning either you hate the word love and roam around wounded all your life or you take life in your hands and start having fun and start to play with other people’s emotions just because you were hurt once.

But then one day/night the LOVE CUPID strikes once again on you
And once again you fall into the ditch of LOVE from which you have been hurt once now you are in it once again, what do you do then?

Is life playing games with you? Or you are mentally unstable when you know that what love has made you go through why walk on the same path all over again? How can one be so stupid to repeat the same mistake twice when you had vowed that love would never make you fall /weak again for someone?

“Why do we fall in love (based on the psychology of falling in love)?”
According to M. Radwan, Masters in Science “it’s all related to how your mind works. If you are single or currently not involved in a relationship, your mind will always be on a hunt for your long awaited partner, even if you think that you don’t care about that now, if someone did match your criteria then you will fall in love with them.” After quoting Mr.  Radwan I think I am in a position to somewhat explain can one fall in love more then once?
Although you are heart broken and depressed to the core because of one failed relationship, life does not end there you eventually get to meet someone better then the one you lost because when one falls in love the second time he/she has learnt from ones mistakes and plans to start afresh making everything clear to this person whom he/she has again fallen in love with.

The question is not how many times you fall in love? that can then be like wearing hearts on ones sleeves but to have a serious relationship yes, you eventually end up falling in love again and for that you have too loosen yourself up allow yourself to look for someone who is more or less like you, become a flexible personality, change from what you were before (that is for the better) and trust me then sky is the limit for you.

In this apparent race of life, we tend to forget the more important aspects of life. Developments take place at any cost, even if it means cutting down your life supply, the trees or poisoning your own drink, the rivers. The magic of the nature that prevailed for billions of years are at a threat of destruction in a few decades. The beauty around us goes unnoticed, the language of nature forgotten and its lessons unheeded.

The concept of knowledge, wisdom and teaching also seems to have taken grievous turns. The world of a child seems to revolve around the marks he scores for a test or his ability to perfectly recall, word by word, the content of his textbooks. However, we forget that life is not about scores or text books but about living together and supplementing others as much as you can. After all, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Emphasis on exams too has dealt a serious blow on the knowledge or rather wisdom gained by a student. The often hectic schedules of exams means that students are dragged along with the flow or dropped off. Those who do manage to hold on often are not able to grasp the concept or message conveyed completely and to contemplate on the same. Children are taught from as “exam point of view” and as this syllabus often has to be strictly adhered to, many of the doubts that come across a child’s dynamic mind never find a window of opportunity to be expressed and are put off and so is his natural inquisitiveness.

Younger children are often made disciplined. Certainly, a basic concept of courteousness is essential but beyond that, if a child is bound by customs and civility, his natural infinite curiosity on everything will be extinguished. As somebody said, “the greatest achievement of man would be to keep his childish curiosities throughout life” and certainly such and man is sure to succeed in any field that he lays his hands on.

Another related unapparent “flaw” present today, as expressed by the “revolutionary” new teacher in the movie, “Dead Poet’s Society” is the “Dangers of Conformity” referring to the tendency of men to ‘ go with the flow ‘. Nobody questions the system, until an observer often from outside the system questions it. Once in the flow, one is either unaware of its flaws or are reluctant to express them for fear of retribution and this is one of the reasons for corruption, inefficiency and often unjustifiable traditions. The great men that we often recall from the history and praise have all gone “against the flow”. They dared to think beyond what was taught to them and dared to talk about it. Every single famous personality of the past brought to our by few moments of recollection would have at least one revolutionary deed or a concept ,completely unimaginable at the time, to present to the world in their quiver. From the times of Plato and Archimedes to Albert Einstein, Mother Theresa and Abraham Lincoln, the examples are numerous. They all have realized that what one is told or taught in not always true or right. The mistakes of the past must not be carried on must be mended. And the first step to that is to find out what is to be mended and this can only be achieved by questioning that which is known.

These concepts have often caught the imagination of many great poets, an example of people who did not forget to take their imagination when they embarked on the journey of life. “The road less travelled by” in the the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost talks about the same. It may be harder to trudge along the road less traveled but would give one the satisfaction of fulfilling desires and trusting oneself and of course of doing something different form the monotony of the ages.

This leads us to another often mistaken and controversial concept, Success. The question, what is success would probably yield as many different answers as the number of people it is asked to but most of them would probably hint that a good job, high status, wealth and fame as their idea of success. And this is what many educationists are trying for their ‘ disciples ‘ to achieve. However, in my opinion, as is of many others, success should not be attributed to wealth but to satisfaction, the satisfaction that you have done what seems right to you and that you ave contributed to the world. This view of success not only stops you from trampling over others in the frantic race to the mirage but also gives you a particularly pleasant peace of mind and contentment.

To the question,” What is the solution to all these problems?”, the only apparent answer is to be aware of what one is doing as the saying goes”Look before you Leap”. Think for oneself about what others have said, oppose what is not right, learn from the nature, choose your own path, if need be make one, and above all , Think Anew!

According to Tillich, man has created a problem for himself that originated from the spirit of the industry. In theory, “man is supposed to be the master of his world and of himself” (46). In practice, however, man has traveled beyond this objective and instead has made himself a mere “object among objects” in his world. As a result, man has reached a stage of “emptiness and meaninglessness, of dehumanization and estrangement” (46) leading to his eventual downfall. In short, the spirit of the industry has carried man to where he wanted to end, and then beyond into a territory of things. Things that, because of the industrial society, are over-productive. For example, what started as a crude bomb developed into an effective tool in war. If it had ended there, the world would be so different today. But the encouraging shove of the industrial spirit and movement has carried this bomb past a realistic stage, to a point where one nuclear bomb can be the downfall of entire mass-populated cities. Man’s infatuation with the industrial spirit has lead, and will continue to lead, to man’s downfall.

Tillich also believes that in order to regain meaning in life and become individuals once again, man must rely on the creativity of the courageous. Man must turn to those that turn culture into tangible representations. Man must turn to artists, authors, architectures, musicians, and the like. These select, though courageous enough to show man what is wrong, do not necessarily have all of the answers to correct the problems. They merely state the problem and man must rely on himself to seek the answers.

One such courageous soul is Robert Frost, who wrote the poem “Out, Out-.” Frost uses the example of a young boy to point out to the audience a flaw in man’s reliance on the industrial society. Though the description of the nameless young child is vaguely described to the reader, one’s heart still aches for the child who lost his life to a saw while doing his daily task. Robert Frost uses this scenario to detail how man’s reliance on technology for a livelihood results in death. In the case of the young child, the death is quite literal. The boy died after losing a limb to a saw which was more thoroughly described, particularly personified with beast-like details, than the boy himself. On a grander level, Frost is telling the world something is wrong. The reliance on technology by man is causing death, be it literal, as in this case, or emotional, as in others.

Robert Frost made an example of the young boy who relied upon technology developed by the forceful industrial society for a livelihood. However, this point is lost if man does not heed the warning and then change his ways. Frost has stated a predicament and, according to Tillich’s theories, it is now up to each individual man to find an answer.

Another poet, Charles Bukowski, also makes a point using a man who is reliant upon technology for his livelihood in his poem “drunk with the Buddha.” Though the man featured in Bukowski’s poem does not suffer a literal death, he faces another monster just as daunting, if not more: emotional death. Charles Bukowski’s poem is focused on a poet who is suffering from writer’s block. The poet expects to find inspiration while sitting dolefully at a typewriter, as if the typewriter is expected to be the ultimate fountain of revelation. As with the poem by Robert Frost, the machine, a result of the industrial society, is personified into something more detailed than the human protagonist the poem features. When the typewriter expectantly fails to provide a novel set of ideas for the poet, he sinks further into an emotional death, aided by alcohol.

One particular stanza in Charles Bukowski’s “drunk with the Buddha” further details the numbing effect of the industrial society on man: “we still search the walls for answers that will not arrive” (lines 13-14). Brave Bukowski is showing an example of how man now expects everything to cater to his needs now that he has mastered technology. He is making the point that answers to life cannot be found in the walls; to find these answers, one must be out in the world individually and independently seeking to find his own answers. Walls are not magic 8 balls that will reveal one’s fate. Man must be “the master of his world and of himself” (46). Man’s reliance on technology because of the industrial movement will only lead to his demise. Charles Bukowski has observed this for himself and articulated it in his poem. It is now up to man to interpret these observations and seek on his own for answers.

In conclusion, men like Charles Bukowski and Robert Frost need to continue using whatever outlets are available to communicate the predicament arising from man’s dependence on technology. However, these men can only do so much. After a problem is exposed, it is up to the rest of humanity to obtain answers.