Directive

(Robert Frost)

A Simple Critical Analysis

Robert Frost is a unique poet of his time. Well, all poets, one way or the other,
have their own uniqueness and ingenuity in their works. However, Robert Frost has a
way of putting words together in such a paradoxical manner which appeals so much
to the readers’ senses. Such is the case with his poem, Directive, one of his literary
masterpieces. Perhaps it is not as well-known as his other literary works like The
Road Not Taken, Mending Wall or Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, and yet it
is one of the most controversial poems ever written in history. Many authors and
well-versed critics have tried to put forth their own interpretation of the work with basis
anchored on the poet’s life and experiences when he was still alive. Even then, it did
not seem to satiate many curious minds as to the true meaning of the work since
many have still thirst to unravel its mysteries.The enigma of the poem’s meaning,
which only the author who has the access to the original, has eluded many of even the
most skilled interpreters, much more of a neophyte like me.

The point of view of the poem is unclear. Be it safe to assume that it is the poet
himself or some kind of a traveller who took lead in this literary work. The beginning
phrases of the poem,
‘Back out of all this now too much for us…
.…There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town…’

is suggestive to a passing of time and the changes it brings to the people and the
place the poet once cherished. And the loss of witnessing the remains of the once
good and simple life had brought nostalgia to the traveller, an agonizing feeling and
sigh.This is such a journey poem much like Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,
only that ‘Directive’ seems like a journey the traveller had decided upon to make after
a long period of waiting. This is contrariwise to the temporary stop that the poet had
decided upon on Stopping by Woods, also authored by Robert Frost.

The emptiness, desolation, and confusion prevailing in modern life has been nicely
recaptured by Frost in the poem. These sensational images, along with many others
have laid a picturesque view of the general emotion oozing out of the literary work. I
think that ‘Directive’ is one of the most moving poems written by Robert Frost. It is, in
fact, one of the strangest and most characteristic, most dismaying and most gratifying
poems that any poet has ever written. It is suitably full of signposts, only you have to
be very careful with signposts in a Frost poem: they may be like the ones in wartime,
turned to point in a wrong direction to confuse as it is very metaphorical in nature.
Getting lost seems indeed to be a key theme in the poem: lost, that is, in the sense of
escaping from the confusion of our present, and perhaps from the prison of our own
too burdensome identity, and presenting ourselves in a state of innocence, like
children entering what may not be the kingdom of heaven but at least a time and place
of greater spiritual clarity. The playhouse for children, and the deserted house of the
grown-ups, and the brook which was the source of water supply to the house, lie at
the end of the road on which someone else has walked in the past before the traveller
and on which the traveller is going at present. This road may lead back to the point in
the historical past where one may be able to get rid of all the confusions of modern
life.

The poem is, thus, a directive or an injunction guiding the traveller back to the
source. The source lies in the brook near the spring of a mountain. The poet directs
the traveller to drink from the brook in a Grail-like goblet belonging to the children’s
playhouse. He seems to urge us to regain the state of childlike purity and innocence,
and avoid the confusion characterizing the life of a grown-ups in the present world.

Similar to most of Frost’s poems, ‘Directive’ contains a double layer meaning. It

expresses a simple view about life, but also deals with human existence in general. It
is both a narrative and an exhortation to us to return to the Source, despite all
difficulties lying in the way.