Poetry Analysis: Robert Frost's 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening'

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Sean Purcell Mr. Spinner In Writing: S4 23 December 2009 Death on a Snowy Evening Throughout the poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, it tells the story of an unknown individual traveling down a trail. As this person continues moving forward down the path, they get distracted by the woods as the snow lightly falls down. The horse wants to keep moving along while this individual is still confused. They are constantly facing the conflict of going into the woods or following their promise to keep moving on the trail. Through this travel, Frost connects the idea of the trail to life and the distractions of life to the woods and it is often shown through the tone as it builds up in the poem becoming more significant in the last stanza. The main theme of this poem is about the distractions of life and trying to move past them. As the individual discovers woods off the trail in the first stanza, they are immediately contradicted of whose woods they are and became an instant distraction. This is similar to the distractions of life when times can get stressful and many people may just want to give up. Within the stanza, Frost shows mellowness in the tone he wrote with as a major distraction that has come about. He writes, “To watch his woods fill up with snow” (Frost, 4). The individual’s life is becoming filled with stress, but it has not become a major problem yet and is not seen with great importance in Frost’s writing at this point. With the individual having trouble keeping straight on the path, the horse is noticing a change since they probably do not normally stop if the horse is responding in a surprised matter. In the second stanza, it states, “The darkest evening of the year” (Frost, 8). This quotation shows the most stressful day of this particular person’s life as it was the darkest or worst day that they have lived.

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