Commentary on Desert Places Essay

Alone

In this poem, Desert Places , Robert Frost uses aspects of nature, such as a desert (the title of the poem) so to express the ambiguity and the solitude of the surroundings . In beginning, in the first three stanzas we see how nature can give a sense of death and aloneness , but in the fourth stanza we really see how Frost relates all this to himself and his state of mind that gives the poem a depressive tone. Therefore this poem is trying to say that isolation and loneliness can give a human a fear of insecurity within their own souls; and Frost becomes aware of this loneliness by the examples nature gives.

One example nature gives is the snow in the first stanza. Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast, this first line shows that snow and darkness is something that is coming, inevitability and rapidly; thus giving the reader a sense of incoming death. In a field I looked into going past, and the ground almost covered smooth in snow, but a few weeds and stubble showing last. , in this next few lines Frost uses snow to represent his desert place. He uses the word snow to give the imagery of a place with no color, since snow is white thus covering all the colors and the beauty of the field he oversees. Frost also uses the word weeds (at first analyzing it, it was a bit confusing )but this word informs the readers that at first the field had something cultivated there which shows the labor of a human trying to resist the wrath of nature and the incoming death by putting something in natures way (the cultivation). This first stanza gives the readers a feeling of death and loneliness by how snow covers everything taking its identity with it and doing a formless white sheet above the ground.

Another example nature gives are the woods and animals in the second stanza. The woods around it have it- it is theirs. All animals are smothered in their lairs., these first two lines give another imagery of death and isolation because Frost puts the word "smothered" which can indicate a suffocating feeling that he gives to the animals because he himself might have experienced it also. I am too absent-spirited to count; the loneliness includes me unawares, these last two lines in the stanza give the poem an isolated feeling and a lack of individuality and soul. This is because when Frost says that he is too absent-spirited to count, he expresses his loneliness thus expressing his feeling of being dead and emotion-less. This can explain why he can't think right now because he is so caught up with his own self, his loneliness, his isolation, and his own desert(ed) place.

The third and final example nature gives is the stars in fourth stanza. They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars- on stars where no human race is., in these first two lines of the stanza Frost clearly expresses the isolation nature gives off with snow and the isolated woods and animals just like the stars give off a sense of being alone and isolated. However he also explains that all this emptiness doesnt scare him. Its because, like he stated in the third stanza of this poem, that the loneliness is less than a whiter and blanker whiteness of the snow that has no expression and this does not scare him because there is nothing he can really interpret since the emptiness of the snow has nothing to express. I have it in me so much nearer home to scare myself with my own desert places., these last two lines of this stanza is where Frost becomes aware of his loneliness in himself and his soul, thus getting scared with his desert places and not just any desert places. Therefore Frost is not intimidated by the physical isolation that the snow, the animals, the woods and the stars bring, but is scared by the thoughts that this provokes. The emptiness and isolation requires Frost to examine his own soul, and he finally realizes his isolation and inevitable death, and it is this what scared him and not being alone.

In conclusion, the poem Desert Places by Robert Frost is a poem of isolation, emptiness and death in both the physical world and mentally. Frost uses his own perspective of desert, not as how we would think about it being dry and without life, but instead Frost is talking about the snow filled field as being this 'desert' full of emptiness and without expression. He has used adjectives with a strong connotation to empathize emptiness and death , including lonely, loneliness, smothered, weeds, no expression and empty. Frost has giving readers a dark poem that goes beyond what people can see and goes into his soul with the help of the empty feeling he gets from nature. In the third and fourth stanza Frost finally addresses the loneliness he feels, recognizes that it is not the deserted places in nature that scare him, but that in his own soul.