Earn K.

1101 04/06/2018

Certainty is Uncertainty

Life has its own path and most of the time you can't do anything to change what has

already been destined. Robert Frost, a four-time Pulitzer Prize winner, was one of the famous

American poetry. According to Gerber (2018), Frost was born on 26 March 1874 at San

Francisco, California. When he was 11, his father died from tuberculosis so his family moved

to Lawrence at Massachusetts. At the same time, Frost started to interested in literature. He

attends two colleges, after high school and in 1897, but he quitted both because of his

boredom and health issue. After that, he became a farmer and worked on poetry instead. Due

to the changes in his life, his career as the farmer, and his like in nature, Frost uses natural

world to describe the human condition in his poems: “Dust of snow”, “Stopping by Woods on

a Snowy Evening” and “The Road Not Taken”. Frost states that life is unpredictable and

uncontrollable by using the symbols of a crow, the woods, and a road.

In “Dust of snow” (Frost, 1923), Frost uses a symbol of crow to express the

unfortunates that can occur. Due to the failures he experienced through his lifetime, Frost

sometimes felt discouraged. But not all the failures brought him down, instead, some of them

could inspire Frost to move on and became a successful poet. In his poem, he says “The way

a crow/ Shook down on me/ The dust of snow/ From a hemlock tree” (1923). He uses the

word “crow” to show that bad events or feeling that get into people’s lives can be beneficial.

For instance, the health problems, which caused him to quit Harvard University and prevent

him from being graduated, drove him to become a poet. Frost decides to use this symbol

because it commonly represents bad luck or death. Also, since the crow is a bird which flies

around in every direction, it is easier for the reader to understand and see that those bad
events just come into life and the end of it might be unpredictable. Besides this, Frost uses the

word “woods” as the symbol of peace and death to express the uncertainty of life.

As in the poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (Frost, 1916), Frost uses

the word woods to demonstrate his belief that death has its own time and cannot be

controlled. Since he never graduated from any university, he worked very hard and being a

poet was just one of his works. In 1915 when Frost moved back to America, he worked as a

tiresome farmer. Frost wanted to take a rest and get away from the chaos but he couldn’t

because he had to take care of his children and work. As seen in the last stanza, he states "The

woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I

sleep” (1916). The symbolism of woods is used to present the peaceful place that is far from

the rioting in society, or death. Frost uses this poetic device by describing and creating the

image in readers mind how it looks in his opinion. Also, the woods are known as the place

that is far from the city and represent the peace that many people desire but they cannot get in

without permission so it can emphasize that life is unforeseeable and hard to control because

everything has its own time. Other than this, Frost uses the symbol of roads to demonstrate

the decision of life that can always change.

Frost used the symbol of the road as the choices of life in the poem name “The Road

Not Taken” (Frost, 1916). Since his childhood, he had to make many decisions especially

during the college period when Frost quitted two universities due to his boredom and health

problems. From those decisions, he believed that his life changed in many ways because they

made him what he was. Therefore, Frost believed that one choice in life will lead to other

paths. In the last stanza of this poem, Frost reveals his thought by writing “Two roads
diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the

difference.” (1916). The word road in this poem is used to express the theme of uncertainty

through lifetime by choices. The reason why he uses the word roads is that it is easy for the

reader to connect it with their life. To be more precise, in real life, a road is the pathway that

is used to get to places. During the way, the road diverges so it is our option to choose the

direction we desire to go. At the end, the chosen path will bring us to another, and

sometimes, it will be too late to get back to the first choice.

Frost uses symbols to illustrate his belief about the uncertainty of life. He uses the

symbol of crow in the poem “Dust of snow” to show that the bad events that came into our

life can help people to move on. In the poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”,

Frost chooses the word woods to symbolise a peaceful place or death that has its own time to

go. Lastly, the symbol of the road in “The Road Not Taken” which shows that life has it

pathway that always changes due to our decision. Frost emphasize that the perspective of life

is unpredictable in this three poems.