Here's my actual paper that I turned in for my theory class- My previous critique did not live up to the teacher's standards, and so it had to be altered. Enjoy the most basic of basic essays.
Robert Frost’s Design is his typical nature poem, often enfolding a deeper meaning in between the lines.The speaker in the poem doesn't have so much as a title, and Frost gives the impression that he or someone like himself is the narrator. He encounters upon a scene not unlike a nature documentary, in which a spider has taken the meal of a moth on a white flower. Frost the proceeds to ask all sorts of questions about the meaning of the scene laid bare before him, like, “Did a larger, universal working cause this to happen?” “Does a divine entity exist?” “If I had not been at this exact moment at this exact time in space, would this event still be continuing, and would I still gather the same revelations from it?” Robert Frost, in his poem Design, sees the Divine in Nature, through his use of describing colors, the type of poem he chose, and the questions he asks within the poem. The piece itself is short and sweet, along with unyielding insight that tends to gather with a philosophical poem such as this.
Color choice is an extremely poignant theme within the poem, if it was a choice at all. First of all, everything is blatantly white, from the heal-all flower to the moth, even the spider is described as “snow-drop”. (L. 7) Frost used the color white to give the scene a pure, unearthly and clean connotation. White represents a certain goodness, a clean slate with endless possibilities. White is the color of the killer and killed within the poem’s situation, as the moth is already dead and being dragged away in the speaker’s view. This applies a neutrality to the spider and the moth, and the situation Frost finds themselves in. The heal all was supposed to be blue, according to Frost, “What had that flower to do with being white,/ The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?”(L. 9-10) The flower could’ve been a blue to represent the slight sadness of the situation, but instead it’s emboldened with a blameless color, or lack of. White could also be considered the color of the divine, the idea of the white-pearly gates or the pure-white of the virgin mary represented through a spotless dishcloth. Frost could have made any aspect of the poem any color he wanted- but he choose white all around. The fact that the speaker in the poem focuses on this color and mostly only this color, is a clue that he views this act or happening as some sort of holy representation, or at least something to question. This choice along with stating and describing it throughout the piece itself shows that there’s deeper meaning inlaid within the simplicity of life and death, or in the things that grow around it. Frost had the idea of a higher power in mind when viewing a simple nature scene.
Design is a petrarchan or Italian sonnet, with 14 lines in iambic pentameter and an A-BB-AA-BB-A-A-C-AA-CC rhyme scheme. There’s 8 lines in the first stanza, 6 lines in the second, and follows the basic form of iambic pentameter. The sonnet’s form itself was meant to be a devotional or passionate piece, either giving praise or admiring the subject within. The first stanza is more than evident of that, given the flowery language Frost uses, “
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.
“ (L.1-8). There’s a beauty in everything, and Frost tries to bring this out by making more or less every subject within the poem beautiful. The spider is dimpled and non-threatening given his color. The moth is merely dead, but peaceful in a strange way. The flower is merely the setting and background for the scene, but also lends it’s natural serenity to Frost’s tone. Frost tries to see past the human ideas of ‘good’ and ‘evil’- The spider is merely gathering breakfast to ‘begin the morning right’. The moth isn’t inherently holy or better than the spider; it’s merely dead. As life is absolutely connected to death, Frost conveys that nature is connected to the divine. The entire act before him remains in a neutral light for the rest of the poem, only for the speaker to question it in the end. He sees a higher power in nature because he merely asks, “Why?”
The ‘turn’ of the petrarchan sonnet is indicated within the last stanza- those being the last six lines. In this stanza he asks the most questions, leaving the poem open ended in a way; Almost asking the reader to answer. However, the most critical questions lie within the last five lines. Frost questions why he’s been made to view this particular unfolding, ending the poem with, “(...)
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 appal?
If design govern in a thing so small.
”(L.10-14) He only begins to ask questions at the end, innocent questions like ,” What path did I have to follow to end up here and now? Why this scene? Does design have a say in even something as small as this?” His questions, along with the fact that the Italian sonnet is a devotional form of poetry, shows that he wants to know why the world goes on like this and he’s eager to learn. Frost is a curious human, like anyone else, and finds himself in a moment of pondering. In this he sees that nature has and is directed by an intrinsic ‘design’, though it might be a bit random at times. “What but design could do this? If there is a design, it must be making things up along the way- Like controlling the destiny of a moth or a spider.” He’s amazed that a higher power could certainly be working on the same level as the microcosmos, and finds God reflected in nature. To emphasize this, Frost writes a thought-provoking piece to show that the two are connected.
Frost is deeply questioning, and questioningly deeply. He goes for the big outworldly questions, and is met only with the silence of the void. The pause that comes at the end of reading a poem. He asks questions to the reader fully knowing that he can’t answer them, at least not all at once or with anything like a coherent statement. Frost takes it upon himself to write almost a pastoral about perhaps the smallest event in the world, then immediately wonders about it for an indefinite amount of time. Frost asks only to divulge in the little things, because we might be little things to something else.
