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Poetry Analysis Robert Frost Essay

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POETRY ANALYSIS: DESIGN Robert Frost's poem Design seemingly disputes the question whether there is a design to life; yet, he is not able to establish an answer. Despite the comlexity of his poem his implied message is rather simple. Frost's statement clarified human's eagerness to finding a meaning to life and an essential background and reason to events, regardless of how small and insignificant they might be. His work states an advice not to interpret too much into insignificant conincidences or apportion them too much relevance. During the first stanza, the speaker of the poem encounters a dimpled white spider on a white heal-all that has previously caught a white moth. This seemingly coincidental situation is so distinct …show more content…

Furthermore, he proposes two answers on how the conincidence might have happenend. He suggests that a "design of darkness," an evil power, delectated by conceiling a bad deed in the color of goodness, is to be held responsible. Yet, a spider killing an insect is a fairly common sight and in no way spectacular. This would imply, that the designer, God, or whatever you might want to call it, himself, besides all the beauty on earth, also created destruction. This is a shocking picture and differs from most peoples' image of a creator which is what makes this poem so powerful and striking. His second idea would be that there is no order and design to life at all. If this small example of destruction was not the work of some evil force, then -so his argumentation- there can be no God or goodness leading the small things on earth. Consequently, if small things on earth are not governed by a good force, the possibility of no god or no design at all is given. But does this form of reasoning not seem a little far fetched, almost satiric? Even though Robert Frost is known for agnostic poetry, this poem obviously focuses on humanity. It is a parody of humans' everlasting curiosity and their compulsion to find a proof for a supreme being and a reason for existence on earth. He is describing a spider killing a moth while sitting on a flower and despite the fact that there is a perfectly plausible biological

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