Design Robert Frost Analysis: ‘Design’ by Robert Frost represents the creation at the hands of the vengeful creator who designed the Earth with “death and blight” in mind. The speaker begins the poem by discussing a spider and moth he found on a flower’s top. They came together there as if it was inevitable for the spider to eat the moth.
Students can also check the English Summary to revise with them during exam preparation.
Summary of Design Robert Frost Analysis
The Italian sonnet ‘Design’ by Robert Frost was published in ‘A Further Range’ in 1936. The sonnet is the interpretation of the poet’s amazement over the world’s enigmatic existence surrounded by omens and evil designs. The critic says that this is a sonnet of finding evil in innocence, a melody of experience, though the voice is barely that of Blake’s childlike singer.
The poet has constructed the image of a fat and white-dimpled spider which had caught hold of a moth-like white piece of the satin cloth on a flower called white heal-all. The simile has been used to indicate the white colour of the moth.
The three things- spider, heal-all flower, and the moth are shown to be white. The spider, the moth, the white cloth, and the flower are brought together for an appalling reason. The appalling reason is a dark design of death, or we can say the food chain in a possible term.
The speaker highlights the food chain lying in nature by bringing all the white elements together. The spider has gone there in search of the moth. Someday, the spider will also become the food for the flower. All these elements of the universe are interconnected. Nature has designed us to be independent. Even living being survives upon each other. Nature has already designed this interconnection.
The heal-all common country plant presumed to have healing properties: it is almost always blue in colour. The poet has constructed a different white variety and stranger still, attained to it a white spinner, a white spider holding a white moth, completing a pattern of whiteness. In the world of turmoil and darkness, there is principle and design.
The white colour indicates purity and innocence, but in this poem, this colour has been contrasted with its meaning. The white colour of the wicked flower heal-all and the white natural born killer spider together brings the image of a horror scene, and the innocence of the white colour does not reflect here. Here, this poem’s white colour has been used as a symbol of decay, death, and destruction. It is the god’s design to bring all of the creatures together, and it is also the dark form of nature to turn blue colour heal-all flower into a white, black colour spider and the moth into white colour.
These 3 characters of death and disease are at the same place are like the elements of witch’s broth. This image does not draw the idea of the enhancing, but the image of destruction, cruelty and dependency. By showing white so cruel and horrific, the poet infers that darkness is everywhere, even under the hide the innocent people. Humanity is vulnerable and fragile as the moth in the poem.
Design is a severe and enigmatic poem. It is rich in symbolic interpretation. According to Thompson, for various and complicated reasons, his fluctuating and ambiguous viewpoint mocks, at times, any complacent notions concerning a benevolent design in nature. This poem is one of his sonnets that has occasionally been singled out for particular praise is a dark study in-white, ambiguously entitled “Design.”
Design Robert Frost Analysis Structure
“Design” is a fourteen-line sonnet. It is divided into two stanzas. The first stanza is an octet, meaning it contains eight lines. The second stanza is a set of six lines. In the Shakespearean or Petrarchan sonnets, the divisions are more intricate. This follows the pattern of ABBAABBA ACAACC.
The rhythm is iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter means that each line contains five sets of two beats, metrical feet. The first beat is low, and the second beat is high.
Design Robert Frost Analysis Poetic Techniques
The poetic techniques that are seen in “Design” include alliteration, enjambment, juxtaposition, and caesura. The appearance of the same letter or sound at the beginning of closely connected words is called alliteration.
In poems, a thought steps over the end of the line and continues to the next line’s beginning without any punctuation. This is called Enjambment. Juxtaposition occurs when the fact of two things are placed together with a contrasting effect. In the second line of the poem, find an example of caesura. It happens when a line is divided in half with or without punctuations.
Analysis of “Design”
Stanza One
Lines 1-8
The speaker begins the poem by describing a spider that is “fat” and “dimpled.” The words give us the idea of the appearance of the spider. The second lines tell us that the spider was white and frost. A new character, the moth, has been introduced. They represent the “characters of death and blight”.
The fifth line has a musical rhythm by using alliteration and internal rhyme. Death and blight are the two essentials that are needed to start a morning right. The poet says that death and blight are the parts of a witches’ broth.
The following lines give us the picture of the spider carrying the moth on a flower-like “paper kite”. The moth’s wings are stained, as referred to in the first stanza.
Stanza Two
The second stanza tells us more about life, death, intelligent design, and that intelligence’s intentions. At the end of the poem, the poet says that he wants to know the possibility of the world coming together so perfectly to steer the white moth that it ended up in the spider’s mouth. The poet wants to know about the position of the spider on the flower.
The couplet at the end is rhythmic. The lines implicate a dark design, and the creator of the world may have invented it in order to “appall”. He created the world to promote fear.
