Robert Frost's Birches
"Birches" by Robert Frost is a nostalgic poem filled with fond memories and fantasies, yet at the same time the speaker reveals his longing to escape. Frost sets up a conversation with himself using dialogue between his sensible, knowing self and his fantasizing, nostalgic self. At first the poem seems to be just an account for all of the birches leaning with none standing straight. Frost would like to think that a child at play bent the trees, probably to escape the truth that nature destroys itself. The idea of trees being bent by ice and snow is much less romantic than the idea of a young boy enjoying himself, teaching himself some lessons about Physics and life. This idea of nature's self-destruction is one that isn't often addressed in our time, since most destruction to nature is blamed on humans and pollution. Frost, being a man of the country, realizes that nature often destroys itself, but he wants to imagine a different cause for the leaning branches. The speaker's fantasy offers him a way to make some good come out of the injury to the branches, thereby allowing himself to recollect his past as a boy swinging from branch to branch. This fantasy also allows the speaker, not Frost, to escape
description of the boy at play, "He learned all there was/To learn about not launching out too soon", "...climbing carefully"; "Kicking his way down through the air to the ground" shows many traits of learning through experience. The clever choice of words in "with the same pains you use to fill a cup" he prompts the reader to remember the pain of growing up with all of the new challenges and tasks associated with growing up. Because of Frost's commitment to using nature to help people explore them, it is not surprising that the most frequent methods in his attempt to deal with this nature-spirit dualism is the juxtaposition of reality and fantasy. death, but perhaps through fantasy where he may start over again. He quickly addresses the idea of fate and explains that he doesn't want his wish "half " granted; he does not want to die; he only wants to go back to a time when life was care free and easy. His wish "to get away from earth awhile" is not a death wish. Frost's love of life and the absence of gloom in this particular work illustrate that he simply wants a better place to be, a place where reality and stress can disappear for awhile. from the reality of the destruction of the earth. For these reasons, this poem illustrates the battle of the speaker between the youthful thoughts of fantasy and the older, more plausible, facts of reality. The personal aspect of the poem starts in line forty-one. The speaker takes the reader back with him in his/her flashback to childhood and the years of being "a swinger of birches." The speaker lets the reader know the fantasy world he pictured and revealed was one that he had experiences as a child; one which he can remember the carefree feeling of being a child. "Too far from town to learn baseball" he used to "subdue his father's trees / By riding them down over and over again / Until he took the stiffness
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1274
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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