Analysis of Robert Frosts Desert Places Essay -- Robert Frost Desert

Analysis of Robert Frost's Desert Places Robert Frost's 'Desert Places' is a testament to the harrowing nature of solidarity. By subjecting the narrator to the final moments of daylight on a snowy evening, an understanding about the nature of blank spaces and emptiness becomes guratively illuminated. The poem's loneliness has the ability to transcend nature and drill a hole through the mind of the narrator so that all hope for relationships with man and nature are abandoned. In the first stanza, ?snow? and ?night? are juxtaposed to create a sense of loneliness and emptiness. Meaning is derived from the effects they have on their surroundings and on the narrator. Here, snow has the qualities of an arid and formless white sheet. Anything it covers immediately loses shape and form. Snow blankets the ground to hide what is there, leaving nothing but a blank slate where more vigorous objects have been seen before. Night parallels the snow in that it obscures vision and generates an absence of light. These two stark agents of oblivion occupy their surroundings to create the effect of emptiness. The effect of speed upon the nature of the snow and night startles the narrator in the first line: ?Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast? (1). They both fall with such rapidity that the narrator almost misses the effects of the pair on the field he ?looked into going past? (2). The envelopment of the narrator?s surroundings becomes a jarring experience, as he/she only has a few moments to observe what is happening. The narrator is able to observe only the ?few weeds and stubble showing last,? (4) as the dense blanket created by the ominous pair becomes apparen... ...nkind is doomed by his/her own thought. The ability of nature to obstruct vision mirrors mans? ability to displace meaning. Man can eliminate nature, god, or fellow man using this method, though this will leave us to be as lonely and meaningless as the blank spaces that surround the void of infinity. The poem calls into question mans? ability to create meaning from his/her surroundings. Is mankind really so desolate and lonely? ?Desert Places? shows us that loneliness dominates in the absence of light. A frightening statement about the bottomless pit of loneliness is found within the repetition, absence of description, and domineering nature of internalized despair in Robert Frost?s ?Desert Places.? Works Cited: Frost, Robert. The Poetry of Robert Frost, ed Edward Connery Lathem. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1969.