Themes in Robert Frost's Poem 'Desert Places'

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Alone In this poem, Desert Places , Robert Frost uses aspects of nature, such as a desert (the title of the poem) so to express the ambiguity and the solitude of the surroundings . In beginning, in the first three stanzas we see how nature can give a sense of death and aloneness , but in the fourth stanza we really see how Frost relates all this to himself and his state of mind that gives the poem a depressive tone. Therefore this poem is trying to say that isolation and loneliness can give a human a fear of insecurity within their own souls; and Frost becomes aware of this loneliness by the examples nature gives. One example nature gives is the snow in the first stanza. “Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast”, this first line shows that snow and darkness is something that is coming, inevitability and rapidly; thus giving the reader a sense of incoming death. “In a field I looked into going past, and the ground almost covered smooth in snow, but a few weeds and stubble showing last. ”, in this next few lines Frost uses snow to represent ‘his’ desert place. He uses the word snow to give the imagery of a place with no color, since snow is white thus covering all the colors and the beauty of the field he oversees. Frost also uses the word weeds (at first analyzing it, it was a bit confusing )but this word informs the readers that at first the field had something cultivated there which shows the labor of a human trying to resist the wrath of nature and the incoming death by putting something in natures way (the cultivation). This first stanza gives the readers a feeling of death and loneliness by how snow covers everything taking its identity with it and doing a formless white sheet above the ground. Another example nature gives are the woods and animals in the second stanza. “The woods around it have it- it is theirs. All animals are smothered in

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