Summary of Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Frost )

Unit-13 Life and Death

Flax-Golden Tales

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

-Four Levels of Interactions

Robert Frost, USA (1874 – 1963)

For : BA / BBS First Year (Business English )

Literal Comprehension :
This poem composed by Robert Frost , presents the scene of the speaker’s returning home at dusk in his own house sleigh . He stops to enjoy the peace and solitude of the occasion . The snow is falling softly . The woods are attractive. There is no other human to break the silence . But the horse finds no reason for stopping. It is growing dark . There is no house in sight and miles stretch before them. Reflecting on his horse ’s impatience , the speaker agrees that he should move on to keep the commitments he has made and only then , he can sleep .

Interpretation:
In this poem , the poet feels the sense of death and life . Dark , evening, solitary place , far from village or society give the sense of death . The poem tells us that we should do our work and journey to go death. The poem tells us that we should do our work and journey to go miles . Similarly , the poem also imparts us that although beauty and peace of the world and our personal burdens may interrupt us from fulfilling our duty, we should move on to fulfill our promises and responsibilities to humanity before we die . In other words , it can be thought of as a statement of man ’s everlasting responsibility. A man should walk through the dark and nothingness, but he/she should not be attracted towards temptation.

Critical Thinking :
This poem is a symbolic poem . Here the forest , snow etc symbolize the hardship of life . And, the horse sleep means he has many responsibilities and duties in life to do before he dies . This poem is very beautiful one. We can notice the rhyming pattern to mark its beauty . Every third line of each stanza rhymes with other three lines of the following stanzas . In the last stanza , the third line has the same rhyming pattern , which suggests that there will be no new stanza , It shows that simple words make a beautiful poem . It as a symbolic poem compares our life with the events of that evening . Like in our life there are problems, hardship but we are compelled to go ahead without stopping. Here the owner is the god because all things on the earth are created by god and he is the owner of these things but he is unseen and far from here . We have many things to complete before our death.

Assimilation :
Generally, life and death poems by romantic poets are definitely interesting and beautifully composed . The analogy between life and the worldly things is very much lifelike . The poem reminds us that our life is very short but we have to do many things before our death . This world of god is very beautiful and we can enjoy a lot because he does nothing us ; he has left for us. Like him , I also get a lot of inspiration from this poem . When I feel sad and unable to do anything I read this poem . This poem gives me a lesson of human life and responsibility. It makes us aware about our life and its length as well as our duties to be done before death . Like the poet , I am very much conscious about our life , duties and death.