Freiria 1
Loneliness in Robert Frost’s Poetry
Robert Frost is one of the most famous and influential poets in our nation's history. His poems have captivated thousands and have been analyzed over and over again. Many feel that themes of emptiness, loneliness, and despair are recurrent in his poems. The poems "Desert Places", "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", and “Bereft” could certainly fall into these categories. Robert Frost was a very successful poet with a wife and loving family which brings up the question, "Why would Frost choose to write poems that express loneliness at this period in his life?" When attempting to answer this question one must first analyze the poems. After analyzing Robert Frost’s "Desert Places", "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", and “Bereft” one can conclude two things: that the theme of loneliness is presented in all three poems and that each poem offers a different example of a setting or a situation that can inflict loneliness on humanity.
"Desert Places" is a poem told by a third person observer who initially is focusing on a snowy field. In the poem, the speaker is a man who is traveling through the countryside on a winter evening and he is completely surrounded by 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" (Line 11-12). Whiteness and blankness are two key ideas in this poem. The white, seen in the snow that covers up everything, symbolizes open and empty spaces. The blankness symbolizes the emptiness that the speaker feels because he realized his life is very much like this winter setting. To him there is nothing else around except for the snow and his lonely thoughts. The speaker feels numbness as the snow throws its blanket of whiteness over everything, but he is in denial about feeling so alone. "The loneliness includes me unawares" (line 9). He has reached a stage where he has lost...