Imagine Being A Swinger of Birches
"Birches" , by Robert Frost, is a symbolic poem about choices, the choices of heaven's truth, and earth's truth. The choices exists because when Frost had first experienced earth's truth he did not like what the senses convey, or can find no meaning in it, then the aspiration toward some kind of heaven became more important, and that heaven's truth becomes a choice. The need to choose is apparent, as Radcliffe Squires points out from his book The Major Themes Of Robert Frost, because these truths are his understanding of the universe. If he does not pick the way he perceives his life, then his conscienceness shall go insane. Through his experience, Frost finally takes both paths of truths by becoming a swinger of birches. Through out the entire poem, we can see that Frost purposely divides the entire poem into three parts or stanzas. He wants us to experience possibly his own experience of swinging of birches by first introducing us to the start of the journey down on earth in the first stanza. He then releases us on the birch tree into the air where we could almost reach the heavens above in the second stanza. Finally as the birch tree can no longer go any higher, it brings us back down to earth so that we may be perceive a dif
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay That would be good both going and coming back. The next couple of lines destroy that feeling of youth and joy that Frost shows in the first three lines of the poem and the passage begins the visual journey through the woods. In this journey, Frost wants the reader to see the birches as they really are and as they seem in a series of dreary images. Part of the realism comes from the sound of passages: The image of the boy as a swinger of birches refines the portrayal of imagination as "a swinger of birches." The desire to go to heaven is, as Squires describes, "surrounded by suspense and even a species of terror." Squires purposely put italics on "and even above the brim" to signify the course to heaven's truth. So now we are confronted with heaven's truth. This scene is softer than the scene of the ice storms in lines 5 - 15. But the point of this opposition between imagination and reality, the boy vs. the ice storm, doesn't come until years later at the end of the poem. When I see birches bend to left and right
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Approximate Word count = 2910
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page double spaced)
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