The Analysis of 'Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening'
Abstract
Most of Robert Frost's writings are set in the New England countryside and are so intensely rural and idyllic that he has been called the "Field Poet". 'Stopping by the Woods on a snowy evening', one of Robert Frost's most famous poems, this poem was written in the winter of 1922 while he was at home in Shaftsbury, Vermont. Frost himself later called it "my most memorable" poem. As a popular poem, it is often mistakenly thought to be merely a landscape poem, in which the poet laments the charms of nature. In fact, however, the poet has a deeper intention; he is borrowing the main character in the poem to tell his own inner world, using the most simple and ordinary descriptive language, but also containing many life truths. Frost's use of fresh and native traditional English coupled with neat and traditional meter makes the poem readable and relatable to the readers. This paper analyzes the writing techniques, the choice of imagery, and the central theme of the poem to provide readers with new ideas for interpreting the poem. The analysis shows that Robert Frost is able to use plain and simple language with ordinary things in his poems to convey profound life lessons to the readers, which is intriguing and worth the readers' repeated readings and speculations.
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