Josh Chen

AP Literature and Composition

Ms.Lin
1st Draft
On ​Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Robert Frost has become a household name when one talks about poetry; he’s lauded as

one of America’s finest poets and a leading figure in the Modernist movement. As a Modernist,

Frost composes his poems using simple language and experiences of his everyday life to convey

hidden layers of ambiguities and meanings - the signature of Frost’s poetry. However, unlike his

colleagues, Robert Frost favored more traditional metrics and forms of poetry. (Cady) “Stopping

by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” being one of Frost’s most iconic poems, perfectly showcases both

Frost’s Modernist and traditionalist qualities. On the surface, “Stopping by Woods” captures a

simplistic, visual snapshot of a man stopping to observe the woods during a snowy night. Frost

develops the woods as dark and ominous through imagery and the reactions of the horse. Yet the

man – the narrator – still hosts an undeniable attraction towards the woods, as evident in his calm

and serene tone. The poem’s traditional metric and form of a Rubaiyat stanza further augments

this attraction by subtly drawing the reader forwards through the poem, creating a vicarious

reflection of how the narrator is drawn towards the woods. Ultimately, by setting the woods as a

perilous environment and conveying the narrator’s illogical attraction towards it, Frost explores

the alluring dangers of irrational obsession as well as the struggle between obsession and

obligation.

Frost first imbues the woods with ominousness and a sense of danger through broad

strokes of imagery. It should be noted that the simple imagery and colloquial language reflects

Frost’s Modernist style. For example, the phrase “without a farmhouse near” is uncomplicated and

straightforward, yet it aptly captures the cold solitude of the woods. The lack of any human

construction, even so much as a fundamental farmhouse, serves to enhance the desolation - the

“white silence” (Gray) - of the wilderness. Frost then continues on to attribute the prescription

“frozen” to the lake and “darkest” to the evening. Both phrases resonates the similar aura of

bleakness. When the two are combined together, the visual contrast between “whiteness of ice and

the blackness of the night” (Olgilvie) evinces a starkness that establishes the woods as a dangerous

force.
 Frost further augments the ominousness of the forest with the reactions of the horse as the

representation of reason and obligation. In the second stanza Frost introduces the “little horse” to

symbolize the rational mind. As the narrator stops near the wood, the horse begins to “think it

queer.” In the third stanza, the horse’s hesitation is intensified in its attempts to warn the narrator

by giving “his harness bells a shake” and asking if there “is some mistake.” Horses are often said to

have a “sixth sense” that responds sensibly to danger (Keeling); within the poem the horse retains

its sensibilities and work ethic in the face of the haunting beauty of the wood. The horse’s

apprehension signifies that stopping for sightseeing just before the cold woods is not a rational

idea. By personifying the horse, Frost bestows upon it a voice that readers would give weight to.

The overall uneasiness of the horse is a conspicuous hint that something is amiss, generating an

ominous mood for the forest and for the cold.

Yet the dangers of the forest, along with the horse’s warnings, is offset by the speaker’s

perception of the scene as sublime. Frost expresses the narrator’s satisfactory tone with pleasant

diction that contrasts greatly with the setting. In the third stanza, for example, “easy wind” and

“downy flakes” is evocative of relaxation and rest. The term “easy” implicates that the narrator

perceives the surrounding as comfortable. Similarity, “downy” – which means the soft, fine

feathers – has a connotation of coziness and sleepiness. In the next stanza, the unusual ascription

of "lovely" to this scene of “desolate woods, effacing snow, and black night” serves to complicate,

rather than alleviate, the mood when one considers how “pervasive [are] the connotations of

dangerous isolation and bleakness.” (Olgilvie) Indeed, the very next phrase, “dark and deep,”

juxtaposes with the calming connotation of “lovely.” The disparity between the satisfactory, serene

tone and the desolate woods demonstrates the narrator’s blindness to the salient dangers of the

forest, which points to his state of obsession - he is so taken by the seductive beauty of the place

that he ignores the menace of the surroundings.

Frost extends the alluring effect of the woods with strict Rubaiyat format and rhyme

scheme. Unlike his contemporary Modernists, Frost tends to construct his poem with traditional

structures. “Stopping by Woods” is no exception; the poem is written in perfect iambic tetrameter

and with the rhyme scheme of ​aaba/ bbcb/ ccdc/ dddd​, without a single forced rhyme. This

combination of flowing rhythms and rhymes “produces a pleasant hypnotic effect” that “ increases
as the poem progresses.” (Brower) The hypnotic effect pulls the reader forward through the poem,

providing a vicarious experience that replicates the narrator’s fascination with the woods.

Towards the last stanza, the repetition of the two lines manifests the theme of irrational

obsession versus rational obligation. He claims he still has “miles to go before [he] sleep[s]” - a call

for himself to pull out of his temporary stop. The repetition draws readers attention to this line

and subtly engenders a sense of indecision. The narrator is assuring himself that his obligations

are more important by repeating his responsibilities to himself. This suggests that the speaker has,

or at least starting to, engage and resist his obsession by reminding himself of his sensible

responsibilities. However, the readers are not told that the call of social responsibility proves

stronger than the attraction of the woods; the poet and his horse have not moved on at the poem's

end. The dichotomy of the poet's obsession towards the woods and obligation to a world of

"promises" - the latter “filtering like a barely heard echo through the almost hypnotic state induced

by the woods and falling snow” (Ogilvie) - constitutes the central theme: the struggle between

obsession and obligation.

Frost starts off by establishing the woods as desolate and stark through arrangement of

the natural scene and personification of the horse. He then exhibits the speaker’s fascination

towards the dark forest with a serene and satisfactory tone, and even allows the reader to

experience said enthrallment with traditional rhythm and rhyme. With the scene of a man

stopping by the forest on a cold, wintry night, Frost captures the struggle between emotion-based

obsession and reason-based obligation. Of course, the subject of said obsession is up to

interpretation. Some critics believe it to be the topic of death, while others hold a more generic

view - that the subject of fascination is anything that could be possibly detrimental. After all,

according to Frost himself, “The poem is the act of having the thought.” (Gray) The focus of

“Stopping by Woods” is meant to be about the process rather than product; it invites the reader

not to simply look at the results of that tension, but to share in the experience of the struggle

between obligations and obsessions.

 Source Cited

Brower, Reuben A. The Poetry of Robert Frost: Constellations of Intention. New York: Oxford

UP, 1963. Google Books. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

Keeling, Linda J., Liv Jonare, and Lovisa Lanneborn. "Investigating Horse-​​Human Interactions:

Equine Perception of Danger." The Veterinary Journal 181.1 (2009): 70-71. Web.

Ogilvie, John T. “From Woods to Stars: A Pattern of Imagery in Robert Frost's Poetry.” South

Atlantic Quarterly 58, (winter 1959): 64-76.

Gray, Richard. American Poetry of the Twentieth Century. London: Longman, 1990. Modern

American Poetry. University of Illinois. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.

Cady, Edwin Harrison., and Louis J. Budd. On Frost. Durham: Duke UP, 1991. Google Books.

Web. 12 Dec. 2016.