Design

:- Robert Frost
 Introduction to the Poet
Robert Frost (Robert Lee Frost)

 Born – 26th March 1874 San Francisco California US.

 His father died when he was eleven and moved with his mother and
sister to Lawrence, Massachusetts.
 At high school he became interested in reading and writing poetry.
 He enrolled at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire in 1892 and
later at Harvard.
 He left Harvard without a degree.
 occupations – teacher, cobbler and editor of the Lawrence –Sentinel.
 His first published poem ‘My Butterfly’.
 In 1895 Frost married Miriam, a college friend.
Literary Career
 In England, he met such poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke and
Robert Graves.
 Frost also established a friendship with Ezra Pound who supported him in
his writing.
 He returned to the U.S. in 1915. By that time, he had published two
volumes of poetry.
 Frost was admired for his depictions of the rural life of New England.
 Usage of colloquial speech and realistic verse to portray ordinary people
in everyday situations.
 Widely admired for his mastery in metrical form.
 Widely Admired and highly honored American poet of the 20th century.
 Died – 29th January 1963 Boston, Masachusetts.
 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 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.
Overview of the poem
• A fourteen lined sonnet which consists of an Octave and a Sestet.

• The poet has constructed the image of a fat and white-dimpled spider
which had caught hold of a moth-like white piece of the satin cloth on
a flower called white heal-all.

• In ‘Design’ the usual benign design is overturned. Spiders are normally

black and the heal-all flower is blue, and the moth is brown. But here
they have changed colour in an eerie manner.

• Shows over the mysterious existence of the world surrounded by

omens and evil designs.
Whiteness of the characters.
 The white color is generally a symbol of purity and innocence, but in this
poem this color has been contrasted with its meaning.

 The white color of the wicked flower heal-all and the white natural born
killer spider bring forth the image of an actual horror scene and the
innocence ness of the white color does not matter here

 A symbol of decay, death and destruction.

 Highlighting the dark design of death or the natural food chain.

Analysis of the poem.
Line 1 & 2
“I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth”

• The speaker begins the poem by describing a spider that is “fat” and
“dimpled.” The words give us the idea of the appearance of the spider.

• The second line tell us that the heal-all flower is white. (instead of blue)

• A new character, the moth, has been introduced. They represent the
“characters of death and blight”.
Line 3 & 4
“Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight”

• The moth is probably already dead.

• Phrase "rigid satin" an example of juxtaposition

• A really depressing family reunion—"assorted characters of death and

blight”.
• Moth is pictured as if it were some sort of funeral linen.

• Shown a very natural scene that appears to us to be very unnatural

Line 5 & 6
“Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth”

• Emphasize that the scene is all set. They are "ready to begin."

• The fifth line has a musical rhythm by using alliteration and internal
rhyme. Death and blight are the two essentials that are needed to start
a morning right.

• The poet says that death and blight are the parts of a witches’ broth
Line 7 & 8
“A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.”

• Raises queries about the strange combinations of existence

• Creating a sense of end to life sing the phrase “dead wings”

• The white and fragile moth is now dead and the mention of the “paper
kite” brings to mind the butterfly by the same name.
Octet (1 – 8 lines).

• 1st person narration - “I”

• The poet introduces “assorted characters of death and blight” ‘a dimpled
spider, fat and white, a white flower and held up by the flower, ‘a moth,
like a piece of satin cloth.’
• The three are introduced separately assembled in synthesis to
demonstrate the incongruity of their relationship, and then re-described
in the last two lines of the octave for further emphasis.
• The octave heightens and makes an ironical comment on the experience
and shown as a personal experience.
• Visual imagery: a dimpled spider, fat and white, white heal-all, a snow-
drop spider,
• Tactile imagery: piece of rigid satin cloth (the reader feels the soft
rigidness of the dead moth)
• Simile: like a white piece of cloth, “like the ingredients of a witches’
broth,” flower like a froth, dead wings carried “like a paper kite.”

• Symbol: White (White color suggests the purity and innocence)

• Irony: heal all, white spider (though the flower is given the name as heal
all, it cannot heal the moth and spider seen as friendly and pure but its
action is evil)
• Juxtaposition: death and blight, spider and white satin clothe (two different
things put together to compare and contrast.)

• personification: dimpled spider (spider is given human quality, usually

dimples are found on the human face)
Line 9 & 10 (sestet)
“What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?”

• The turning point of the sonnet (volta)

• The speaker wonders what led the flower to be white.

• The adjectives "wayside" and "innocent" emphasize this same idea that the
flower didn't do anything to make itself white.

• The reader gets the sense that in the end there is nothing that can be done to
stop the workings of life and death.
Line 11 & 12
“What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?”

• “kindred” is used to show the relationship of the flower and the spider
(highly Ironic & personified)

• Spider is considered to be pure.

• Arranged event of some supernatural force.

• Describing this scene as an elevated place, the poem begins to take on a

mythic, epic tone.
Line 13 & 14
“What but design of darkness to appall?
If design govern in a thing so small”

• Metaphor – “design of darkness”

• Third question posed by the speaker unto the readers.

• Questioning the relationship between the spider , flower and the

moth.

• Limitless evil rather than goodness.

• The word "appall" can be seen as a pun on the words "a pall," which
is the cloth that's spread over a coffin
Sestet (Line 9 – 14)

• Simultaneously invokes and questions the tradition of the argument from

design.
• The last line raises questions about whose design it is, whether that of
God’s or nature or darkness, on the one hand, or that of the observer on the
other.
• The ‘design of darkness’ or of nature or of God is the design made by the
perceiver, by the poet.
• Only the human eye can perceive the design in the natural world – and in
that world the potential hostility and violence of the physical world.
• Metaphor/ alliteration: “design of darkness”

• personification: “kindred spider”

• Tone: tone changes into a serious, thinking and ironic puzzlement

• Rhyme: the of deviation from original Petrarchan sonnet sestet suggest the
puzzlement of the poet about the design.
Themes

“Design” raises profound issues related to the creation / nature/ perception and
event artistry
 Appearance and Reality

 Nature is a wonderful design

 Man’s inability to understand the nature

 Nature’s good and evil.

 Divinity and reality.

 Life as an illusion.
Structure & Literary devices

• Clear model of American emblem poem

• Conventional division of the sonnet (octave and sestet)
• Instead of a resolution, leaves a question to the readers.
• Rhyming scheme
• Octave – ABBA Petrarchan sonnet style
• ABBA

• Sestet – ACAA
Unusually restrictive rhyming scheme
• CC
*Sestet concludes with a couplet like a Shakespearean sonnet.
Thank you

Presented by : Shiny Jayasundara