Frost’s first collections of poetry A Boy’s Will was published in England in 1913, he soon became in his own country the most read and constantly anthologized poet. His work was well-received and fellow poets Edward Thomas and Ezra Pound became his friends and supporters. His second collections of poetry North of Boston was published in England in 1914. When World War I started, the Frosts were back in New Hampshire, settling at their newly bought farm in 1915. Thereafter, although his fame grew with the appearance of a succession of books and papers, along with his teaching and lecturing at various colleges. Frost considered the farm and its activities remained the focus of his poetry. At the height of his career, his next collection of poems West-Running Brook was published just one year before his sister Jeanie died.
After being known, Frost also kept living in the rural world. In Frost’s time, the world underwent industrial development and the scientific progress. So it was not common for a public figure with high reputation to live on the farm till his death.
Frost has an independent, elusive, half humorous view of the world, so he endows his poems with precise images, crafty symbols, and employs metaphor and allegories to illustrate his ideas. Frost makes his poems display an exceptional sensitivity to the tones and rhythms. He is a thoughtful poet who employs his words to give the readers suggestiveness and complexity.
This paper consists of five chapters, Chapter one is the introduction. Chapter two is an attempt to analyze Frost’s poems form to show his paradoxical view of the world Chapter three is an attempt to analyze “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” to show his paradoxical view of the world. Chapter four interprets the reasons behind his paradoxical view of the world, Chapter five is a conclusion.
V. Conclusion
Because of transcendentalism, Darwin’s Theory and his personal life experience. Frost holds a paradoxical view of the world. According to analyzing the poems. I find that he wrote about the daily life of ordinary people—farmers, shepherds, small rural events, fence mending, apple picking, good and evil, all the matters of life and death, some were not frequent poetical subjects for his time, but he insisted on them, not as ways to escape from modern society, but as ways to understand life better.
On one side it is beautiful and benevolent, but on the other side it is inhuman and strange. This is nature’s dual character. As we have known, his view of nature contains a certain contradictory elements. In his poem, he both reveals the enjoyment of nature’s beauty and depicts nature’s cruelty and hostility. On the other hand, he uses monologue and dialogue, two contradictory voices to show his paradoxical view.
In his poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, he shows his paradoxical view of the world through the words. With the speaker’s response to the woods, I find three conflicts in this poem: the first one is between people and himself: the public obligations and his private will; the second one is between people and nature: nature is sacred, it is a holy ground, a place of refuge, and tranquillizer, when people get hurt, he can take comfort and rebirth in nature, but nature is also indifferent, dangerous and uncertain; the third one is between people and society: the ideal is beautiful, reality is heavy; but one cannot indulge in beautiful ideal and forget the reality, also cannot escape reality because of the heavy reality.
Throughout Frost’s life experience, On the one hand, the painful life experience makes him disappointed and .pessimistic. On the other hand, he still sees many beautiful things in life that are worth pursuing. Therefore, according to knowing his paradoxical view. We can get a better understanding of our world and better life skills.
