There are clearly bad emotions, such as grief, anger or sadness and then there are obvious good emotions, like happiness, excitement and love. However, this whole concept of positive and negative is turned upside down in Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”. Through Frost’s thoughtful use of rhythm, rhyme and deliberate choice of words, the reader is torn between feeling scared and alone while at the same time feeling calm, therefore questioning the meaning and connotation of words relating to emotions.

Both the rhythm and the rhyme scheme of this poem play a very important part in setting the mood and atmosphere for the reader. When reading the poem out loud, the regular and constant beat of the rhythm can be noticed. Therefore, it almost sounds like a song and could even be sung to simple melodies. For example, when looking at the first line of the poem “Whose woods these are I think I know.” (1) it turns out the poem is written in an iambic tetrameter. This means that every line is divided into four feet and the second syllable of each foot is stressed. This exact pattern is repeated throughout the whole poem. This consistency is very calming for the reader and makes him or her feel at ease. The same thing happens with the rhyming scheme. Frost uses an “a-­‐a-­‐b-­‐a” pattern for every stanza, meaning that the first, second and third line rhyme with each other. The rhyming pattern is once again constant throughout the poem and only changes in the very last stanza, when all four lines rhyme with each other, therefore turning into an “a-­‐a-­‐a-­‐a” pattern. Because of the consistency of the poem’s base, one feels calm and at ease when reading it.

However, the words used in this poem bring out completely different emotions. A few words are emphasized through repetition, the most common one being “woods” (1,4,7,13). This is not surprising, seeing as the woods play an important part in the setting. The whole idea of being in a forest alone on a winter night with a lot of snow and almost complete silence, can be a very romantic image with a hint of nostalgia. Adding words with positive connotations, such as “easy” (12) and “lovely” (13) only adds to that image. However, by deliberately incorporating words with negative connotations the whole tone of the poem and therefore the feelings change. For example, “frozen” (7), “darkest” (8), “mistake” (10) and “deep” (13). This mixture of words with both positive and negative connotations also conveys positive and negative emotions. This can best be shown in line 13 where Frost writes “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,”. Three adjectives are used to describe the woods here. The first one “lovely” is very positive and only used to describe something good. The other two, on the other hand, are negative. But all of them are used to describe the same thing: the woods. This line questions, whether the words “dark” and “deep” necessarily have to be a bad thing.

Almost every word relating to emotion is labeled as either good or bad. Frost questions those labels with this poem. When we look at the base of the poem it is simple and constant and thus calming. However, when looking closer and analyzing the actual content of the poem, we realize that not everything in it is so calming but can also convey rather negative emotions. These two sides create an inner conflict. And to resolve said conflict all we have to do is to forget any connotations we have of words relating to emotions and understand that negative words like “dark” can also have a positive side and positive words like “lovely” might also be negative sometimes.