从罗伯特•弗洛斯特的几首诗歌分析他的矛盾世界观(三)

 The poet was imaging many years later when he is recalling the choice he made today, he would respond with nothing but a sigh, for it would be too hard for anyone, after many more experiences in life, to make any comment on the choice made early in life.
 As above mentioned, this is a symbolic poem1. The “yellow wood” symbolizes sophisticated society, in which most people are likely to follow a profitable but easier way; each “road” actually symbolizes a possibility in life; the “traveler” is the
embodiment of every individual in the human world. The road which is “grassy and wanted wear” refers to a solitary life style; while “way leads to way” implies the complicated circumstances of the human world. Indeed, every one of us will come to certain crossroads in our life, when we are confronted with making a choice, in order to possess something worthwhile, we have to give up something which seems as lovely and valuable as the chosen one. Then, whatever follows, we must accept the consequence of our choice for it is not possible for us to return to the beginning and have another chance to choice differently. So according to this poem, we can see that people have the freedom of choice, which means that people can choose what he want when he is confronted with making a choice , but people can’t have free choice, which means he can’t choose what he wants when he wants it. So in this poem, Frost says “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.”
 2. Analysis of “Mending Wall”
 “Mending Wall” is a metaphorical poem, published in 1914 in Frost’s second collection of poetry, North of Boston. It is set in the countryside and is about one man questioning why he and his neighbor must rebuild the stone wall dividing their farms each spring. The description about the main idea of this poem is describing the time he and his neighboring farmer spent the day in replacing fallen stones on the wall, which divides their land, the poet declares, ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall’ and expresses his philosophy of tolerance, generosity, and brotherhood in the contrast between his neighbor’s dogmatic ‘Good fences make good neighbors’ and his own more considered ‘Before I built a wall, I’d ask to know what I was walling in o walling out’. The strength of this poem rests upon this contradiction.
 The wall symbolizes the regulations made upon human beings in modern society.2 Living in the modern society, one is bound by many rules and laws, the establishment of which is to enforce the normal social order. A modern society without laws is hardly imaginable. Similarly, a society with too many rules is not desirable either. In this poem, the collapsing of the wall symbolizes the human’s wish to eliminate the estrangement, but the wish often results naturally in a new mending job. Because sometimes people are exposed to the paradoxical fact that it is just due to the existence of these walls that human beings may possibly feel safely defended and, therefore, be calmed down to communicate just over the fence so as to, more or less,  understand each other.
 B. The Language Style
 The most outstand feature of Frost's poetry is its simplicity. The language Frost uses is no longer the "literary language “but the oral language which people use every day. It is plain, but it is vigorous and vivid. The speech in Frost's poem combines both the artistic and the literal tone. His poems gain the special effects from a combination of the informality of speech, the formality of meter and the mono-syllable words. He often employs words from common people to make his poems vigorous and compact. Working people whose nature is plainness and modesty, commonly use them.
 1 The Style of Monologue.
 Monologue is an extended speech uttered by one speaker, either to others or as if alone. 3In Frost’s poems sometimes the speaker is the poet himself, such as in “After Apple-Picking”, “The Road Not Taken” and so on. While listening to the poet intently, the readers may take in his rational and sensible views on man, on society, or on the world as a whole.
“After Apple-Picking” is a personal monologue. The protagonist is alone in a natural setting, but his rumination about commitment shows his concern with social life. The poet presents a paradoxical image by “I am overtired／Of the great harvest I myself desired”(Lines 28-29). This is the conflict between ideal and reality: everyone longs for achievements; however, people take achievement for granted if once they swarm in. Yet despite the exhausted toil, the poet deals with every apple attentively, as an immense evidence of his devotion to a poet’s career. In the monologue of an apple picker, a world of half reality and half illusion is presented. Due to the whole day’s toil, the apple-picker is speaking while half sleeping and half waking; the balance of the poem is maintained by the contrast of paralleled scenes: the scene of picking and that of storing, the scene of laboring and that of resting, the scene of waking and that of sleeping, the scene of normal existence and that of the distorted one seen through ice, the scene of reason and that of the dream. Reality and illusion are combined and mixed to express what the poet had felt, heard, and seen. The sentences of this poem are not regular. Some are short, but some may run for over 5 lines, and consequently, a blending of them directs to the ambiguity of the contrasting scenes.
 2 The Style of Dialogue
 In some of Frost’s poems there are voices of different characters. The obvious use of overt dialogue provides him with a realistic situation so that his thoughts can be heard and understood much more directly by readers. In his poems, the dialogues between the married couples such as “Home Burial”, “The Death of the Hired Man” and “Snow” help to depict people’s real life vividly.
 The dialogue between the major characters Mary and Warren in the long poem “The Death of the Hired Man” presents two different attitudes towards Silas, who has returned to their farm, supposedly to work for them again, but actually to die. As the couple’s debate whether to take Silas back or not, they hold different view at first.
 Mary’s principles are mercy and love. She struggles to persuade her husband that they must accept their obligation to help the old man in his broken and useless situation. However, Warren is rather impatient with and unsympathetic to Silas at that moment. His judgment attitude is severe. “What good is he?” But at last, Mary’s tenderness gradually affects her husband. “I can’t think Si ever hurt anyone.” Silas, who is described as the one who is “worthless,” who had “nothing to look backward to with pride”, though never appears in person in the poem, but the climax of this poem arrives when Silas had obtained understanding and had been forgiven by all, unfortunately, he was already dead.
III.The Paradoxical Thoughts in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
 With the exception of “The Road Not Taken,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is probably Frost’s best-known poem. Even Frost called the poem his “best bid for remembrance.” This poem describes a moment: a driver stops his horse buggy to look at the woods, his horse shakes the harness bells which the driver thinks is the horse’s way of saying, “There must be some mistake,” and then the driver decides it is time to move on. This poem is structured around many familiar oppositions, man and nature; business and pleasure; movement and stopping; society and solitude; life and death; activity and sleep and so on. With the speaker’s response to the woods, I find three conflicts in this poem: people and himself, people and nature and people and society.
 A. Contradiction Between People and Himself
 For Frost, his characters are almost always of two minds: the contrast between his public obligations and his private will. In this poem, the poet describes the woods are dark, for this is “the darkest evening of the year”－“December twenty-second”. But the darkest evening also imply the time when the poet was in a hard situation. Once when Christmas was drawing near, he packed his wagon with some farm produce and made a long trip into the town, hoping that he could exchange his farm things for a few small Christmas presents for his children. But as times were hard for everybody, there proved to be no sale in the town. As he headed home disappointedly, evening came. It was snowing. His heart grew heaver and heaver. Even the horse was sensing his despair and was going more slowly as they approached home. Just before they came into the view of the house, he realized that his family might be expecting him anxiously. How could he face them? He saw no way to spear his family the despair he felt. The horse slowed down and then stopped at the sweep of a bend. It knew what he had to do. Frost just sat there and cried like a baby. This is the story behind this poem.

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