Stopping by the woods on a snowy eveving

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Robert Frost contemplates death in his poem en d ‘ Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’. The setting of this poem symbolizes death. The persona is enchanted by the woods and death, thus he stops to ponder. The rhyme scheme reflects the idea of death reaching to the speakers thought. The woods at a given moment is so inviting to the tired traveler. This is a way to express how death at times attracts some people (Tan and Tom 16).
The ‘ frozen lake’ is used to show that the area is lifeless. In stanza two, the last line, the persona talks of ‘ darkest evening of the year’. This is a metaphoric phrase for death. The persona tries to elaborate the ‘ life less’ through what he thinks is in the mind of his horse (Tan and Tom 13).
The persona later realizes he cannot stop and rest because of his ‘ promises’. This shows that the persona has decided not to lose hope. In the last two lines of the poem, the persona laments about what the future holds ‘… a long life without rest’ (Tan and Tom 26).
The speaker uses the element of personification in stanza three. He expresses the horses’ ‘ harness bells a shake’, and uses this to show that the horse was asking a question. According to Tan and Tom, in the last stanza the persona repeats the phrase ‘ And miles to go before I sleep’ as a metaphor to mean, ‘ A long way to go before I die’ (9).
Work Cited
Tan, Peter K. W, and Tom Stoppard. A Stylistics of Drama: With Special Focus on Stoppards Travesties. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1993. Print.