Robert Frost poetry

“The Death of the Hired Man” (805)

A narrative poem is a poem that tells a story—a series of related events with a beginning, a middle, and an end. A narrative poem also features characters and, frequently, dialogue. Most of this narrative poem consists of dialogue written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter).

1.      Identify the details in lines 103-110 that create a vivid image of the setting of this narrative poem. What does this passage tell you about Mary’s character?

2.      Do any of the main characters change in the course of the narrative? Give line numbers/specific examples to support your answer.

3.      Does the conclusion of this narrative poem strike you as inevitable, or unavoidable? Why or why not? What would your feelings have been if Warren, instead of answering “Dead” to Mary’s question, had answered “Asleep” or “Sharpening his scythe”?

4.      State in your own words the poem’s theme, or what it reveals to you about our lives. How could its theme apply to social issues faced in both rural and urban areas today?

5.      Frost says he aimed to give the speech of each character in his poetry a distinct sound, just as people’s voices sound different in real life. Does he successfully differentiate Warren’s and Mary’s dialogue? Give reasons for your opinion.

“Design”

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,

On a white heal-all, holding up a moth

Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --

Assorted characters of death and blight

Mixed ready to begin the morning right,

Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --

A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,

And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,

The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?

What brought the kindred spider to that height,

Then steered the white moth thither in the night?

What but design of darkness to appall?--

If design govern in a thing so small.

1.       Describe the scene set up in the first stanza. What are the three characters in the poem, and what is happening to each one?

2.       What color is each character? What justifies the poet’s description of them as “characters of death and blight”?

3.       Tone refers to the writer’s attitude toward a subject or toward life in general. Tone can be described as sarcastic, cynical, awed, tender, and so on. Tone is created by language. What similes are used in the poem’s first eight lines? How do they affect the tone of the poem?

4.       What questions does the speaker ask in the final six lines?

5.       What is the answer in the last two lines? Explain, in your own words, what the “design of darkness” is.

6.       Always look for ambiguity in Frost: his poems often suggest several meanings or contain contradictory details. In line 14, at the poem’s end, what reservation or doubt remains in his mind?

7.       How does this last line affect the whole tone and meaning of the poem?

“Mending Wall”

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

1.       Describe what is happening in lines 13-16. According to the speaker, why is rebuilding the wall merely a game (lines 23-26)?

2.       What questions does the speaker think should be settled before building a wall, according to lines 32-34?

3.       Why would the speaker say “Elves” (line 36)?

4.       From whom did the neighbor get his saying: “Good fences make good neighbors”?

5.       What do you think the word darkness means in line 41? What could the simile in line 40 have to do with darkness?

6.       What might the wall in the poem symbolize?

7.       This poem is ambiguous—it presents opposing views about the wall. Do you think Frost favors the view of the speaker r the neighbor? Which details from the poem lead you to this interpretation?

8.       Do you believe that “Good fences make good neighbors”? Do you think the generalization could apply in some situations but not all? Give your reasons.