Critical comment based on the poem By Robert Frost Desert Places.

International Baccalaureate World Literature

Critical comment based on the poem By Robert Frost “Dessert Places”.

Desert Places

Introduction

Robert Frost’s devotional four – stanza poem “Desert Places” contrasts the beauty of winter with depression and loneliness. Frost’s direct and simple word pattern and choice within each stanza help to convey the idea of loneliness. Each stanza which constitutes the poem organizes the images clearly of a lonely state which overcomes the beauty of a winter day. Throughout the usage and control of a rhyme scheme pattern, and recurring sounds and words, Frost is able to describe the characteristics of loneliness. In this critical comment I will outline the way in which Robert Frost underscores the idea that loneliness conquers his life; focusing on form and meaning.

Frost’s control over meaning and form within the poem and stanzas is particularly strong. The rhyme scheme he uses is: AABA CCDC EEFE GGHG, although the strict focus over scheme is not essential to the analysis that is being put forward in this paper, it does constitute a very important part in the construction of the poem’s form and meaning. Such pattern creates a unique emphasis on Frost’s idea of loneliness.

Frost’s lines and stanza arrangement provide the poem a form and meaning essential to the context of loneliness, contrasted with the beauty of a snowy day. The first stanza ...

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Frost’s lines and stanza arrangement provide the poem a form and meaning essential to the context of loneliness, contrasted with the beauty of a snowy day. The first stanza focuses on the image of snow covering “weeds and stubble” (line 4), and the animals smothering “in their lairs”(line 6). Frost goes on asserting that he “too is absent- spirited to count” and indicates that “loneliness” conquers him. These first two stanzas connect in certain way the speaker with nature’s bleakness.

Furthermore, certain words in the third stanza express the idea of loneliness as a conquering emotional state. The words “lonely” and “loneliness”, and “more lonely” (lines 9 and 10) refer directly to the emotional state suffered by the speaker. Along the last stanzas, the speaker claims to feel a loneliness similar to that caused by the “a blanker whiteness of benighted snow” which causes him to have “no expression, nothing to express” (lines 11-12). This idea prevails as the main focus in the last stanza, in which the speaker describes his feelings of emptiness asserting that:

“They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars- on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places.” (lines 13-16)

In conclusion, Frost’s poem provides an organizational pattern for its contents and images. At the same time the structure is integral in the sense that a beautiful snow day can be contrasted with one of human’s most recurrent emotional state, loneliness.

Bibliography

FROST, Robert, “Dessert Places” found in The Norton Anthology of American Literature volume D. p. 1405. Norton. London. 2007

FROST, Robert, “Dessert Places” found in The Norton Anthology of American Literature volume D.