Poetry - Robert Frost

Universal Human Experience of Choice in Robert Frost 's Poetry

Name

Date

Professor

Class

Semester The poetry of Robert Frost was written in the early 1900s and have become a standard in American Poetry . Frost was a prolific author and poet who had the unique ability to effortlessly combined the rich and varied American landscape with modernized transcendental thinking . His poems continue to inspire poets , students , and casual readers . Many of his poems center around nature , his love for New England landscape , and the human experience . These poems

are usually set in the colorful New England landscape at the onset of fall and memorializes the journey of one man forced to decide , choose , ponder , or reflect . He creates his point of view from his own personal experiences . After a close reading of his poems it is clear that Frost often asserted the same theme throughout his work . This theme was that of human choice and utilization of free will . Frost , in his poetry , uses his own personal experiences to develop and support the theme that life is about making hard choices and committing to those choices

In The Mending Wall , which appeared in North of Boston , Frost writes about neighbors which are forced to work together . While there is respect between the two men there is also a feeling of unrest . This is because the men differ on some fundamental life values which the poem explores (Cook 72 . The poem centers around this growing unrest . One of the neighbors do the majority of the talking and is quite to point out that this is only his opinion and does not want to push his views on his neighbors (Doyle 9 . Frost believes that each man has the right to make their own mistakes and reap the consequences . This is one of the many common experiences which are explored in Frost 's poetry (Doyle 11 . The central image in the Mending Wall ' is the wall itself . As the wall decays , the narrator and his neighbor repair , which maintains their relationship . However , the wall is also used by Frost as an symbol The wall symbolism the metaphoric wall which human build to keep themselves safe and other out . Frost asserts that There were it is we do not need the wall (23 ) implying that while emotional wall exists , they are not needed . He believes that something there is that doesn 't love a wall (1 . Narrator cleverly explores that idea that if people were truthful with themselves they would have to confess they do not like the wall which separates one life from another (Greenberg 1 Perhaps this is the reason for the falling stones and the constant decay of the wall over time

Frost has the unique ability to bring together metaphysical thought and the beautiful New England landscape in rhyming text . There are several minor images within the poem which add to the mood and tone of the poem The setting of the poem is springtime and can be seen...