About the perseverance in life through Robert Frost Poem “Stopping by woods on a snowy evening”

Robert Frost embrace using rhetorical devices such as metaphors to describe some life events. His work “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is a metaphor about life’s difficulties and the steadfastness we should have in these kinds of situations. By the lexical field of winter, the poem’s structure with quatrain in iambic tetrameters and recurrent repetitions, the poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” attempts to orders the world, revealing the analogy between this poem and our own lives and calling for perseverance in life’s difficulties.

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is structured with rhymes and repetitions which organise this poem, remaining the way the human beings have organised the world. As shown in the first stanza with “know” (1), “though” (2) and “snow” (4) the rhymes build the poem with his so called AABA BBCB CCDC structure. The humans have as well designed a world governed with rules. They have tried with sciences as mathematic, physics or chemistry to codify their surroundings. However, this poem’s structure with four quatrains in iambic tetrameters as illustrated with the verse “whose woods these are I think I know” (1) is an analogy with the world which is divided by the four cardinal points, seasons and ages of human lives. The supplementary recurrence of “woods” (1, 4 and 7) highlights the relevance of repetition. Likewise, there are reiterations in the earth as the day and night cycle and the season cycle. The significance of the similitude between this poem and one’s life is shown through the equivalent organization of this poem and the structure invented by the human beings to characterise their world.

The rhythm of this poem is broken in the last stanza by the change of the rhyme structure and the repetition of the second last sentence, introducing the topic of changes in one’s life and especially dreadful ones because of the gloomy ambiance established through the winter lexical field. The first discontinuity is made through the repetition of “And mile to go before I sleep” (15 and 16) in the last two lines. The second rupture is shown with the last stanza rhymes “deep” (13), “keep” (14), “sleep” (15), “sleep” (16) which form a DDDD form, instead of the DDED form expected. The natural rhythm of the poem is by this way broken. Furthermore, the atmosphere of sadness illustrated with the winter lexical field is provided in each stanza making a continuous climate of coldness and expressing grief through the worlds “snow” (4), “frozen” (9), “flake” (12) and “dark” (13) which makes an appropriate atmosphere to introduce another main topic. This gloomy ambiance correlated with the structural modifications implies that an adverse event interrupted the natural life flow. In addition, the repetition of “And miles to go before I sleep” (16) in the last stanza suggests the determination the humans should have to keep on trying in this disconcerting misadventures.

Through a well-structured poem with iambic pentameters, a lexical field of winter, rhymes and words repetitions, this poem build a universe which is like the world we live in. The poem is an allegory of adverse events and the way to face them, it means according with the last two sentences, to keep on to try and continue doing what should be done. The message of this poem is through its own organisation transmitted. Therefor to understand this poem the structure must be analysed.