Saturday, January 8, 2011

Imagery in Robert Frost's "Design"

Images:
dimpled spider fat and white
white heal-all
moth
white piece of rigid satin cloth
ingredients of a witches' broth
snow drop spider
flower like a froth
dead wings like a paper kite
flower being white
wayside blue and innocent heal-all
kindred spider
white moth
design of darkness

In Robert Frost's sonnet, "Design," he creates a scene about a spider eating or killing a moth in a flower. The words dimpled and fat, which are used to describe the spider suggests that he has eaten or is living well in the flower. The peculiar thing about this seemingly normal scene is that the flower, spider, and moth are all white. He uses the lines "assorted characters of death and blight" and "like the ingredients of a witches' broth" to point out that the three things have to come together for this scene of death to happen. Even though the first stanza is describing a scene, the subjective adjectives suggest that it is something unpleasant and possibly wrong. There is a bit of irony in this scene because death happens in a heal-all flower.

In the second stanza, Frost starts to ask questions about why this has to happen. Frost uses adjectives like "innocent" and "kindred" to bring the whole scene to a more philosophical point of view. He ponders why the flower had to be white, what made the spider do this, and why the moth had to fly by. The answer to his own questions are answered at the volta where it means that everything was already predestined so each organism had no choice of what their fate is; therefore the outcome of this scene was already decided or "designed" by a creator or higher being. Frost probably used the color white to oppose the "darkness" in this design. Since white is a color that represents purity and innocence, then why did something dark (the killing of another creature) had to happen? In Frost's last line he writes, "if design govern in a thing so small." This line can be the answer to the previous question and it can be interpreted as how even the small things in life are all designed or destined to do what they do and we can not help it.

This small scene about the spider eating a moth in a flower is a microscopic view of a bigger picture. The reader can walk away with many interpretations of this poem. The death in the flower can suggests that no place is actually safe because we don’t know what is lurking beyond. As for the moth and spider, it was destined that they would meet and the moth becomes food.

No comments:

Post a Comment