Preview

Analysis of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
843 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Analysis of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
Analysis of
"Stopping by woods on a snowy evening"

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is a very well know poem by Robert Frost. The poem appears to be very simple, but it has a hidden meaning to it. The simple words and rhyme scheme of the poem gives it an easy flow, which adds to the calmness of the poem. The rhyme scheme (aaba, bbcb, ccdc, dddd) and the rhythm (iambic tetrameter) give the poem a solid structure. The poem is about the speaker 's experience of stopping by the dark woods in the winter evening with his horse and admiring the beauty of the fresh fallen snow in the forest. Then, the speaker projects himself into the mind of his horse, speculating about his horse 's practical concerns and the horse communicates by shaking his harness bells, and his head impatiently wanting to continue the homeward journey forward. The speaker also tells that he would like to stay but he has to continue home to take care of all the responsibilities before he can die peaceful.
In the first stanza, I think that the speaker is familiar with the land; he knows the individual who "owns" the woods; but that owner doesn 't live on this land instead he lives in the village. The speaker implies that he is trespassing someone 's property but he doesn 't need to worry because that person is in the village and not there anywhere around. So, it 's not an ethical problem for him. He is not ashamed of trespassing somebody 's property. Instead, taking advantage of the moment, he starts admiring the woods without being watched. He is really seems delighted at this moment. I don 't know Mehta2.

why he stopped, may be he doesn 't know himself. May be, he is comparing the beauty of nature to something, but on a symbolic level, the snow strongly reminds me that the poem is set in winter, and which is also widely represented as the image of death.
In the second stanza, I see that the speaker wonders about what his horse is "thinking" which shows his interests are also

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Engl. 102 Poetry Essay

    • 1007 Words
    • 4 Pages

    While reading “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, it should be noted how the rhythm plays an…

    • 1007 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The third stanza is describing the snowstorm beginning; "Unwarmed by any sunset light The gray day darkened into night"…

    • 429 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the two poems, Traveling through the Dark and Woodchucks, the speakers have two different tones and resources of language in the relationship between the human and animals. Both poems are about the deaths of animals, one intentional and the other not. In Traveling through the Dark, the speaker did not mean to kill the deer and feels the need to fix what has happened. In Woodchucks the speaker wants to rid their backyard of the garden eating woodchucks. These two pieces of literature are on two opposite ends of the spectrum, pacifism and genocide.…

    • 579 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    For the reader there should be several different moods that take place. The first of which is loneliness being in the woods by yourself Frost describe this as “and be one traveler, long I stood”. The reader gets the feeling of…

    • 794 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Robert Frosts’ poem “Stopping by woods on a snowy evening”, Frost uses symbolism and personification to tell a story about a man’s battle with responsibility and society versus straying from the accepted path of life. Throughout the poem, Frosts’ use of detail helps push the story along and get the reader into that field. The reader starts to feel the cool, brisk breeze and hear the silence of the nothingness. With as short as this poem is, the reader really feels a sense of a story here rather than just a four stanza poem.…

    • 634 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages

    to themselves, Frost uses this to tell the story in ‘The Wood-Pile’ showing how this poem is moving forward it is an expedition. ‘The hard snow held me, save where now and then’ the words used here come across as very harsh as snow is normally soft not hard, this inflicts the change in the nature in the area of where the narrator is it always uses visual imagery so the picture of the woods is shown. ‘A small bird flew before me’ A technique that Frost uses is anthropomorphism which is used for the bird, as he shows him as if it is his "last stand".…

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The speaker seems to search for solitude, as he rides through the woods in search of solitude he realizes his obligations to the things in his life. The speaker thinks of the man who owns the land and that “His house is in the village though” (2). This line highlights that Frost acknowledges that he knows the man who owns the place where he goes to escape. Frost has a sense of acceptance that the solitude he crafted for himself isn’t real. As much as Frost seeks escape he knows that it is illogical and his “horse must think it queer” that he has left society (5). The “horse” in this poem represents the speaker’s sensibilities, the speaker rides into the woods, yet his horse questions what he is doing. The horse questions stopping “without a farmhouse near” the horse is personified by the word “farmhouse” instead of a barn or stable. The horse, being part of the speaker knows it belongs inside and not in the woods. The speaker’s”horse” or in a literal sense his conscience, creates an internal struggle between the speaker’s want for solitude and his involvement in society. As much as the speaker wants to fulfill his self-prescribed solitude he knows that he has “promises to keep” (14). The speaker finds himself conflicted but ends up knowing that his allegiances lie with the world and other…

    • 1040 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    My analysis of Robert Frost’s poems, “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”…

    • 375 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the first stanza, the walk through the woods is set up, and the choice he faces is presented. In the first line, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood", he words "yellow wood" indicates a "scared world". When having to make a big decision in life, having to choose which way to go, many are scared. Line two shows that the option of taking both paths and shying away from making the decision is not an option, which is unfortunate. The last three lines of the stanza really indicate he is by himself and he thought long and hard about the decision. Lines 4-5 show that he tried to "look down one", meaning he tried to see his future if he followed the path. He looked down "to where it bent in the undergrowth", meaning he could only see as far as to where it was time to, in a sense, grow up. Frosts use of narration is quite helpful in this because it makes relating to the poem easy for the reader, as he is in an almost "all mighty" narrator, speaking for himself and everyone else.…

    • 825 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Stopping by the woods on a snowing evening”, refers to a situation leading up to death . This uses literary devices because it uses imagery .In stanza 2 states,”My little... The year”. This piece of evidence explains that how the author uses imagery to better explain the poem…

    • 726 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    When I heard that we were going to read "Stopping by woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost, I was extremely pleased, as I was very familiar with this it. I first read it as a child and it has ever since been my favorite poem. Explicating this poem gives a much deeper meaning than the words first indicate. The main underlying theme the poem explores is the wonder and sereneness of nature, while at the same time subtly pulling the reader away and towards the hustle and bustle of the modern world.…

    • 1539 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    We start off the poem with Frost imagining a forest of bent birch trees. He wishes that the trees were bent by children playing on them, a nostalgic, childhood merriment that Frost once engaged in when he was a child, but we’ll get more into that later. Despite his lofty indulgence, he knows what really causes the birches to bend, and that is the “ice-storms”. Using this fact, he goes on to elaborate on the beauty of birch trees; such as comparing the falling ice from the trees as “crystal shells”, or as “the inner dome of heaven had fallen” and even going on to say the trailing leaves were “like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair before them over their heads to dry in the sun”. He tends to lose himself in this embellished fabrication…

    • 218 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    "The woods are lovely, dark and deep," This line from the poem Stopping by woods, is saying that the woods are an opinionated place. The woods may be lovely to some, and scary to others. People may consider the woods to be lovely as they may have an interest for nature and it’s beauty. They may also like to see interesting animals, and escape from the reality of life. Some people might want to sit on a tree branch and enjoy the peace and quiet. To some people forests are a dark place, where they can escape to when they want to be alone. People may want to go to the woods to captivate their curious souls, and do something adventurous in the woodlands. Teenagers might want to play around and maybe even invite some friends to hang out with. The…

    • 257 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During his life, Robert Frost, the icon of American literature, wrote many poems that limned the picturesque American Landscape. His mostly explicated poems “Birches” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” reflect his young manhood in the rural New England. Both of these poems are seemingly straightforward but in reality, they deal with a higher level of complexity and philosophy. Despite the difference in style and message, “Birches” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” are loaded with vivid imagery and symbolism that metaphorically depict the return to the nature and childhood, the struggle between reality and imagination, and also freedom and captivation.…

    • 732 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The ambiguity Frost finds in nature becomes a metaphor for the ambiguity he finds in the Human experience” (1). This exposes us to one of Frosts my ideas on nature. He believes that nature is uncertain, unclear, and spontaneous. He makes a direct connection with this to humans, we, like nature, are unpredictable. In his poem Birches he uses the little boy playing in the trees to show the human experience and how it correlates with nature, in his poem Stopping by the Woods he uses the narrator just the same. Birches exposes us to a child who wishes to ‘capture’ the trees, “Frost may be suggesting that the boys need to subdue and conquer the trees points to the destructive side of human nature”(1). In Stopping by Woods something similar is shown; “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……. The woods are lovely dark and deep…” This is a direct quote from Frosts poem, in these stanzas (this is an excerpt from stanza 2 and 4) one can draw many…

    • 1283 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics