Following, Frost personifies a flower as the telephone. The usual beauty and sweet scent associated with flowers follow here as a cherished object of the speaker, demonstrating his love or fondness of the person on the other end of the line. Also, in speaking about flowers and bees, they symbolize the speaker’s ethereal interaction with nature. This implies his longing to join nature itself, perhaps with his lover, who has left for, as said previously, death. Without waiting for the person’s response, the speaker says ‘Don’t say I didn’t’. Although on the first read it seems as if the speaker was being defensive, this could be seen in the context of the poem itself that the speaker wishes to display his understanding of his lover. He then asks ‘Do you remember what it was you said?’ – this is as like a prompting so that his lover will say what he wants, enhancing the theme of two playful lovers, perhaps or perhaps not in a nostalgic perspective.
When the person on the other end of the telephone conservation speaks, the tone is reticent, slightly withheld, by throwing the question back to the speaker in a kind of lover’s tease. The speaker replies that he had driven away a bee – ‘driven’ being a much stronger verb than merely ‘shooing’, indicating that he cared for this phone call greatly. Afterwards, he says that he thought he heard her say ‘come’, which implies a sensual overtone. He continues to taunt his lover in saying that he is unsure that it was actually she who was talking. Emphasizing the lover’s tease, a particular point of view demonstrated that the speaker is pressuring his lover to fight for his love. Nevertheless, the speaker’s love returns the playfulness by saying she ‘may have thought as much’. The speaker then finalizes the conversation by confirming what his love wishes to hear.
In conclusion, ‘The Telephone’ is an enigmatic poem and its development relies heavily on the reader’s imagination. Other literary devices including rhyme, rhythm, imagery and tone also contribute to the reader’s understanding of this poem. Despite numerous interpretations a reader could take up, this poem conveys the bond of people in close relationships and hence human nature.
