THE AXE HELVE

Analysis
■ In this particular setting, the narrator is cutting wood, when he is suddenly
interrupted. The only time when his axe has been caught while chopping wood is
when it was stuck in an alder branch. Here he says that the alder branch is
personified and is said to have ‘held’ him from striking on another alder branch. This
time around, there is another intruder who has caught his axe – his French –
Canadian neighbour.
■ He praises the technique with which his neighbour catches his axe, and says that his
motive ought to be different from what the alder tree had. He then held it a moment
in order to calm the narrator down, and then took it from him. The narrator let him
take it away from him, and there is a feeling of insecurity that we can see in the
narrator – both in terms of axe skills and as a neighbour.
■ Normally, this experience might have been slightly disturbing, but the narrator is
insecure and hence he lets the neighbour take the axe. He also considers the angle
that he’s a bad neighbour, and that’s perhaps why he has come to talk to him, and is
making sure that the narrator is disarmed first in order to avoid any violent
altercation.
■ Much to the surprise of the narrator, the neighbour didn’t speak of him; he merely
talked about the axe. He criticized the axe because it was made in a machine, and
this shows the contempt that rural people usually have for products made in the
process of industrialization. They consider their time-tested and ancient methods to
be the best suited for their needs. Baptiste, the neighbour, then invites him to his
house so that he can get him a new axe helve. The narrator is slightly suspicious,
but agrees.
■ His welcome into the house of Baptiste was different from no other welcome, and
this shows the aspects and representations of social life that we as people all notice
in order to know more about people. The narrator also tries to discern how the
Baptiste is feeling about his presence in his house, whether he is overjoyed or is it
normal. There is a visual of Mrs. Baptiste, on a rocking chair, speaking broken
English and striking a small conversation with the narrator.
■ Meanwhile, it is obvious that Baptiste is an expert with axes. The love for axes is
apparent and he teaches him quite a bit about them. Finally when he gets working
on it, they strike a conversation about education, and how Baptiste prefers not to
send his children to school, preferring homeschool instead. There is a lack of trust
for schools that was common with foreigners in that part of the world. He also
wondered if what Baptiste desired was the friendship of the narrator.
■ Later, the axe was likened to the snake in the garden of evil, and that is open to
interpretation. Perhaps it is only the shape of the axe while ‘she’s cock her head’
that resembled a snake. At one level, it is argued that perhaps the axe is compared
to poetry, and each one must be meticulously made with great detail and attention
rather than made mechanically and without attention to detail.
Setting

1. Begins outside with the American chopping alder on his own.

2. Then the American goes into Baptiste’s home.
■ The narrator is surprised by an intrusion by his neighbour, who grabs his axe as he is
just about to swing it, and then offers to give him a new axe helve because of the
poor quality of the first one. Throughout the poem the narrator seems to try and
second-guess Baptiste's motives, but eventually concludes that he is just lonely and
desiring friendship. The speaker thinks that the axe helve is just an excuse that
Baptiste has used "unscrupulously" to bring the speaker into his house. Yet, in spite
of his mixed feelings about Baptiste, it is clear that the speaker admires him a lot:
Baptiste knew how to make a short job long
For love of it, and yet not waste time either.
Literary devices

■ This poem, about an encounter with a peasant over an ax-helve (or handle), is
written in a prosaic style, as if it is a plain narrative account of a conversation and a
visit.
■ The use of the archaic, Middle English term for handle: helve. This jars readers out
of the ordinary and leads us to expect an unusual encounter.
■ The poem also uses alliteration. Alliteration is repeating the same consonant at the
beginning of different words placed closed together. This creates a sense of rhythm,
as in "forth" and "favor.“
■ The poem uses dialect to show class and education differences. Baptiste, who
criticizes the narrator's axe handle, has less formal education than the narrator, as
we can hear when Baptiste says,
■ “You give her 'one good crack, she's snap raght off.
Den where's your hax-ead flying t'rough de hair?”
■ The poem also uses simile, which is comparing two dissimilar things using "like" or
"as." Here, Frost uses both "as" and "like" to describe how slender and flexible
Baptiste likes his helve:
■ He liked to have it slender as a whipstock,
Free from the least knot, equal to the strain
Of bending like a sword across the knee.
■ The poem also uses personification, likening the ax-helve to a woman with a "chin"
who "cock[s] her head:"
■ Thick hand made light of, steel-blue chin drawn down
And in a little—a French touch in that.
Baptiste drew back and squinted at it, pleased:
“See how she's cock her head!”
■ Personification is used again when the narrator claims the alder branch is somehow
holding him back from striking another alder branch.
Allusion to Christianity

■ Towards the end of the poem, for example, we see an example of allusion used as
part of, and to illuminate, a simile. Allusion is valuable in poetry in that it offers us
another context through which to understand the text: here, Baptiste stands the ax
"erect, but not without its waves, as when / The snake stood up for evil in the
Garden." This is an allusion to the serpent in the Garden of Eden as it is described in
Genesis: the comparison invites us to consider the ax-helve as if it were a living
thing, somewhat sinister, a thing standing upright which should not be in defense of
something which should not be defended.
Ax as She

■ Baptiste's personification of the ax as "she" supports this idea that it has a life of its
own in some way, and its own motivations. Earlier, when Baptiste is cutting the
helve, he demonstrates that "its curves were no false curves / Put on it from
without," again a suggestion that there is a certain power and certain attributes
inherent to the ax-helve.
■ The "long-drawn serpentine" of the speaker's machine-made ax-helve is contrasted,
in its artificiality, to the helve which should stand like a snake almost under its own
power, its natural strength already within and only needing to be coaxed out
■ Throughout the poem, Frost also uses alliteration as a sound device. Dialect is used
to juxtapose our two characters. The way Baptiste speaks contrasts with the way the
narrator speaks; Baptiste is French-Canadian, which is why he is speaking "French-
English."