Robert Frosts Design Essay -- Poetry Poem Essays Poet

Robert icings projectRobert Frosts instauration is a meditation on human attempts to see install in the universe--and human failures at perceiving the coiffe that is actually present in nature. The speaker of the poem perceives what he takes to be a significant similarity, consequently speculates on what the coincidence might mean, or whether it means anything at all. However, he fails to see that there is a very good reason for the coincidence he spots, and the design of nature that it implies is quite different from anything he suggests. Designby Robert FrostI found a dimpled spider, fat and discolour, On a smock heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth-- Assorted characters of death and blight merge ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches broth-- A snow-drop spider, a flower equivalent a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite. What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and vindicated he al-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the wickedness? What but design of darkness to appall?--If design govern in a thing so small. The starting point for the speakers thinking is what he perceives to be a coincidence a white spider sits on a white flower holding up a white moth. The coincidence is even more striking because heal-alls are usually blue. In Western culture, the color white usually symbolizes goodness, purity, and innocence. The language of the poem suggests these connotative of(predicate) links the spider is dimpled as well as fat and white, like a newborn baby. The moths wings are like a white piece of rigid satin cloth, like a bridal dress (or perhaps the lining of a c... ...er would be attracted to a white flower because it would carry some concealment from prey. There is indeed a design at work, but it is not a design of darkness it is simply the order of nature. The existence of such a design leaves op en the question of whether idol exists.An atheist would take the explanation above as evidence that there are rational explanations for natural processes, and that there is no need to raise the concept of God to explain how the universe works. In other writings, Frost does appear to profess belief in God (albeit belief of a complex kind). The focus of Design, then, is not ultimately the existence or absence seizure of God, but rather the tendency of humans to engage in what arse Ruskin called the pathetic fallacy--the act of reading oneself into nature. The first act of trusty belief, Frost implies, is seeing nature as it is.