Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Essay

*Author's note: These are being published to provide students with a fresh perspective on some frequently-studied works of American and British literature and relevant classic movies shown in progressive English literature classes. Feel free to play around with my point of view but please do not plagiarize in part or in whole. Consider my text a stepping stone and allow your thoughts to flourish in your own writing.

Through structure and imagery, Robert Frost's lyric poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," suggests that deciding what you want to do and what you have to do is an extremely difficult choice sometimes.

Frost writes "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," in lyric form so the reader can really feel the struggle the speaker was having with his decision to move on. Lyric poems generally focus on an individual speaker and his or her feelings. This rhyme (technically a ballad) used in this poem is quite unique.

In the first stanza, the last word in the first line rhymes with the final word in the stanza. In the second stanza, three words rhyme; same in the third stanza. The ends of all four lines rhyme. Iambic tetrameter is used to five the final stanza a crescendo-like feeling. It helps show the reader how passionate he is about the winter imagery and how it resembles the turn his life is taking.

In this poem, the speaker has to make a decision about whether or not he should move on with his life. Frost used intense imagery in this poem to get the speaker's thoughts to the reader, and also to make the reader realize that the speaker is escaping from reality for a moment. In lines 9 and 10 the reader can tell that the horse and the speaker are connected in a way that both know that stopping without continuing would be a grave mistake. The horse realizes the hesitation in his rider as he stops in an area without any signs of a cabin or other life. It's as if he knows his rider is in a quandary and the shaking of his bells beings him back to reality - he must continue on with his mission in life.

In line 13 where it says, "The woods are lovely, dark and deep," is a contrast. The speaker sees the beauty of the woods, but yet it is dark and it seems to spread out a long ways. It is hinting to fear of the unknown regarding this potentially new path in his life and realizes it is not a place he would like to stay.

Line 15 says, "And miles to go before I sleep," and repeats itself in the next/final line. This has a strong dramatic effect on the reader. It lets the reader realize just how much of a difficult choice he has to make, and it also tells us that what he is committed to is not the fun or easy way out.

Robert Frost let the reader use his/her own emotions as the real imagery because everyone can relate to making the difficult choice in life. At the end of the poem the reader can't help but place him or herself in the speaker's position to find out what he would do. Through the structure and imagery used in the poem, the reader understands the difficulty of the decision the speaker had to make and at the same time has a deep appreciation of nature and what nature has to offer.