Professor Didner
ENC1102 MW 3:30-5:15
"A Soldier" by Robert Frost
"A Soldier" by Robert Frost Robert Frost's "A Soldier" attracted my interest to some degree. As a United States military veteran of a foreign war, I significantly related to the message that Robert Frost was sending. From my own personal experiences that I have endured while fighting in Operation Iraqi Freedom conflict in Iraq, Robert Frost's words exploded imagery into my mind breaking open another dimension that typed words on a paper could not provide alone. His poem really hit home, creating a bond between the poem and myself, making "A Soldier" a wonderful poem for me to analyze. In the poem "A Soldier," Robert Frost uses a hurled lance that will eventually rot away to symbolize a dead solider that too, will be forgotten soon. Frost is describing a soldier that has been killed by war, and has been forgotten due to the fact that the soldier is just that: a soldier, a killer that had been killed for an unimportant ugly cause. Robert Frost portrays an image that the soldier did live for a greater cause, and should be remembered for it. Robert Frost first describes a lance that has come to rest on the ground, and will soon rot away.
He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,
"He is that fallen lance that lies," and "That lies unlifted," tells the reader that the soldier is dead. The "fallen lance" is "He," the soldier. "Lies unlifted" tells the reader that the soldier is dead, not uplifted as the reader would expect to have read rather than the word "unlifted." The lance, which is the soldier, will wither away just as a lance left in the ground would rust away. Then Frost tells his readers that society doesn't see the soldier's life important enough to have solved anything, and that the soldier's death didn't have any meaning. Before Frost tells his readers this, he first gives a hint that the soldier's death did have