Brishti Mukherjee
TGT English
Rajkamal Saraswati Vidya Mandir
Dhanbad, Jharkhand.
ABSTRACT
This study conducts an ecocritical analysis of Robert Frost’s poetry to examine the representation of ecological awareness & human-nature relationships. His work is shown to anticipate contemporary environmental concerns, emphasizing the interconnectedness of human & natural worlds. With in-depth analysis of some selected poems, this paper will also highlight the contrasting aspects of Frost’s nature & that of the Romantic poets. This study reveals the complexities of Frost’s ecological vision & its relevance to contemporary environmental concerns.
Keywords: Ecocriticism, Robert Frost, Human-Nature Relationships, Ecological awareness.
INTRODUCTION
“My definition of poetry (if I were forced to give one) would be this: Words that have become deeds.”- Robert Lee Frost.
Robert Frost emerged as a poet in the America of transition- when the literature was transforming from Romanticism to Modernism. He can not essentially be called a modernist, as he spoke for conservative adherence to tradition. Frost’s use of imagery & symbolism to describe the rural New England stands in sharp contrast to the increasing urbanization of America. Along with the writers like Emerson & Thoreau, Frost contributed to the revitalization of the New England literature. Beneath the familiar mask of a shrewd Yankee farmer, Frost presented himself as a gentle, soulful, meditative & universal poet who was able to “see the world in a grain of sand.” According to him,
A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness. It is a reaching out towards expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought & the thought has found the words. (paras. 4-5)
ECOCRITICISM: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY
William Rueckert coined the term ‘ecocriticism’ in his essay Literature & Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism (1978). As a literary movement, it began in USA & UK. Cheryl Glotfelty & Harold Fromm co-edited the journal called The Ecocriticism Reader. It is based on an interdisciplinary point of analyzing texts that illustrate environmental concerns & examine various ways to interpret the works of authors from environmentalist perspective. The general features of this theory are:
- Ecocritics study works to find out representations of nature in writing, adverse effects on nature, nature in its violent form, role of human in destroying nature, etc.
- They reject the notion that everything is socially or linguistically constructed. Nature has a real physical entity.
- They believe that too much attention to nature as a cultural & ideological construct may neglect it as an objective, material & vulnerable reality.
- Karl Kroeber points out that ecocriticism is an escape from “the esoteric abstractness that afflicts current theorizing about literature.”
NATURE IN FROST’S POETRY
Most of Robert Frost’s poems have a distinct flavor of the countryside enriched with pictorial scenic description. In his poetry nature is highly deceptive because sinister & terrifying potentialities reign supreme. He moulds nature according to the woes of mankind. In an interview, Frost said: “I guess I am not a Nature poet. I have written only two poems without a human being in them.” His nature is wild, oftentimes having a bitter-sweet quality. It has a realistic flavor describing the co-existence of human & nature. To reflect more on this topic, an in-depth analysis of his selected poems are given below:
- The Road Not Taken: This poem highlights the dilemma of choice in human life. Likewise, nature is also whimsical here. The ‘yellow wood’ & the two roads covered with dry leaves perfectly settle with the pensive mood of the poem. Indicating the arrival of winter, Frost makes the choice of life more vague, uncertain & difficult. He finally ends up choosing the less-travelled path- this path here appears to be the journey of life. The dark forest reflects the real complexities of our life & the accidental, incomprehensible nature of the formative decision. The words like ‘diverge;, ‘travel’, ‘roads’, ‘step’, ‘sigh’, ‘wanted wear’ etc together create a resonance of the endless journey of life without any pause.
- Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: In this poem, nature is presented through amazing silence in a snowy evening. Frost does not make any explicit comment implying that the scene is beautiful or he is moved by it. But his sudden stop indicates that he is somehow drawn towards nature to enjoy silence. The woods & dense forests are always the beacons of promising care to the entire life. The pensive mood of the poem is perfectly created through the snow-covered woods. The last two lines of the poem are connected with the tedious journey of life. Henry James in his Substance and Shadow (1863) offers a fascinating precedent for the contrast between speaker and horse. The horse merely stops but the word ‘stopping’ indicates a positive sense- to observe something or to stop with a purpose. It is not an end, rather the beginning of a new interpretation of nature.
- Fire & Ice: This poem is about the two destructive forces of nature- fire & ice. Here nature is not only physical but also associated with human beings. Anger & hatred are equally disastrous & possess the power to destroy the world in the wink of an eye. This poem questions the human existence in a mood of helpless gloom. Interestingly here the poet is not a part of nature. He is a detached observer.
- Come In: Wood is a recurrent motif in Frost’s poetry & this poem is not an exception. The poet is surprised to hear the song of the thrush at dusk in a dark wood. The thrush is lamenting for the death of the sun. In contrast to Keats’ nightingale, this lamenting signifies the transitoriness of man’s life. The call of darkness is creating a mood of tension but the rejection is a relief.
- Tree at My Window: In this poem ‘trees’ symbolizes nature in its purest form. The poem celebrates the primordial bonding between man & tree. The poet wants to see the tree all the time. The tree’s struggle with storm reminds the poet of his own internal dilemma. But at the end, the affinity faces a disillusionment: “Your head so much concerned with outer/Mine with inner weather.”
- Birches: This poem also begins with the snow-covered birches. The slight ray of sun creates a multicoloured rainbow amidst the birches. The phrase ‘heaps of broken glass’indicates the harsh reality of life. Like The Road Not Taken, life is here presented as “too much like a pathless wood/Where your face burns & tickles with the cobwebs/Broken across it…”. Climbing a birch tree is like ascending towards heaven but Frost wants to come back to this world because “Earth is the right place for love.”
- Desert Places: This poem is bleak & pessimistic in tone. Here the snow does not suggest any productive silence rather it creates a sense of barrenness: “A blanker whiteness of benighted snow/With no expression, nothing to express.” The cold indifference is symbolized by the stars of the poem. Lisa Hinrichsen in her article A Defensive Eye: Anxiety, Fear & Form in the poetry of Robert Frost’ comments: “The poem concludes with intimations of a claustrophobic narcissism (“me, myself, my”) and ultimately forms a particularly visual representation of loss: “desert places” demarcates an undifferentiated emptiness and gives an external language of landscape to the psyche.” (p.56)
THE ROMANTICS’ ARCADIA VS. FROST’S RURAL REALITY
Frost, as a poet of New England, is famous as both interpreter & representative of regional culture. His nature is a symbol of life. Poems like Mending Wall, After Apple Picking suggest that Frost’s poetry often focuses on ordinary, rural landscape unlike the sublime & majestic scenery preferred by the Romantics. Nature is not always beautiful but there is an underlying sense of anxiety, isolation & ominousness. The people in Frost’s poetry represent the otherness of nature. The characters suffer from frustration, helplessness & loneliness. His poems echo the ‘ache’ of modernism. Man’s physical existence is itself a barrier that divides man from the soul or spirit of nature. His poems abound in woods but the poet never stops at the edge. The woods symbolize different things- ignorance, depth of consciousness, perilous sensuous enchantment etc. In Romantic poetry, humans are passive but in Frost’s landscape human figures actively interact with nature. Nature exists because man is there to perceive it. Frost reproduces reality in such a manner that the very scene entices us bit by bit & then involves us completely.
CONCLUSION
Frost’s poetry can be analyzed on the backdrop of Ecocriticism taking into consideration the worsening global ecological crisis. His poems reflect the idea that nature & human beings are mutually dependent. Poems like The Oven Bird & Design touch on the decline of natural habitats. His creations encourage readers to think of the long-term consequences of human action. He had an ecological consciousness which has practical significance in the modern world. Frost’s poems show the deeper meanings of everyday activities & the struggle of rural people. Marion Montgomery comments:
Frost’s view of man’s nature, then, is consistent throughout his poetry. Each man is, in a sense, a stranger in this world, & so he remains…As he grows, he understands more & as he also understands himself… With understanding, comes love which makes him respect the chaos of the world with which he is in conflict, the material with which he works. The same love makes him respect & accept differences between men also. He respects others’ individual differences & expects that others will respect him. (p.55)
REFERENCES
- Duban, J. (2003). A Jamesian Analogue from Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. The Robert Frost Review. 76-79. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24727364
- Hinrichsen, L. (2008). A Defensive Eye: Anxiety, Fear & Form in the Poetry of Robert Frost. Journal of Modern Literature. 31(3), 44-57. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25167553
- Sinyavsky, A., Tikos, L., Allert, F. (1966). On Robert Frost’s Poems. The Massachusetts Review, 7(30), 431-441. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25087444