Assignment paper no.106: "The Mystical Realm: A Poetic Journey Through W.B. Yeats"

Personal Information

Name:- Unnati Baroliya 

Batch:- M.A. Sem 2 (2023-2025)

Enrollment Number:- 5108230002

E-mail Address:- unnatibaroliya@gmail.com

Roll Number:- 26

Assignment Details

Topic:- The Mystical Realm: A Poetic Journey Through W.B. Yeats"

Paper & subject code:- 106: The Twentieth Century Literature: 1900 to World War II

Submitted to:- Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, MKBU, Bhavnagar

Date of Submission:- April 26, 2024

Abstract

This comprehensive analysis delves into the life, works, and critical reception of William Butler Yeats, one of the most prominent figures in 20th-century literature. It provides an overview of Yeats's background, including his upbringing in Ireland, his education, and his early influences in poetry. The analysis delves into Yeats's evolving poetic style and thematic concerns, from his early lyrical poetry to his later, more symbolic and politically charged works. It also examines two of Yeats's notable poems, "The Second Coming" and "On Being Asked for a War Poem," offering detailed interpretations and contextualizing them within the broader themes of Yeats's oeuvre. Additionally, the analysis explores the impact of historical events, such as the First World War and the 1918 flu pandemic, on Yeats's writing, shedding light on the interplay between personal experience and artistic expression. Overall, this analysis provides valuable insights into Yeats's significance as a poet and his enduring influence on modern literature.

Keywords 

William Butler Yeats,  The Second Coming, Historical context, Civilization, chaos and control, Morality and Christianity, Reading as a pandemic poem, ' On Being asked for a war poem'.

William Butler Yeats

 time span was from13 June 1865 to 28 January 1939, was an Irish poet, dramatist and writer, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. He was awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature, and later served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State.

A Protestant of Anglo-Irish descent, Yeats was born in Sandymount, Ireland. His father practised law and was a successful portrait painter. He was educated in Dublin and London and spent his childhood holidays in County Sligo. He studied poetry from an early age, when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. While in London he became part of the Irish literary revival. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats, William Wordsworth, William Blake and many more. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, lasting roughly from his student days at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

From 1900 his poetry grew more physical, realistic and politicised. He moved away from the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with some elements including cyclical theories of life. He had become the chief playwright for the Irish Literary Theatre in 1897, and early on promoted younger poets such as Ezra Pound. His major works include;

1. The Land of Heart's Desire (1894), 
2. Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902)
3. Deirdre (1907)
4. The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)
5. The Tower (1928)
6. Last Poems and Plays (1940).

Yeats is considered one of the key 20th-century English-language poets. He was a Symbolist poet, using allusive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his career. He chose words and assembled them so that, in addition to a particular meaning, they suggest abstract thoughts that may seem more significant and resonant. His use of symbols is usually something physical that is both itself and a suggestion of other, perhaps immaterial, timeless qualities.

Unlike the modernists who experimented with free verse, Yeats was a master of the traditional forms. The impact of modernism on his work can be seen in the increasing abandonment of the more conventionally poetic diction of his early work in favour of the more formal language and more direct approach to his themes that increasingly characterises the poetry and plays of his middle period, comprising the volumes In the Seven Woods, Responsibilities and The Green Helmet. His later poetry and plays are written in a more personal vein, and the works written in the last twenty years of his life include mention of his son and daughter, as well as meditations on the experience of growing old.

Critics characterize his middle work as supple and muscular in its rhythms and sometimes harshly modernist, while others find the poems barren and weak in imaginative power. Yeats's later work found new imaginative inspiration in the mystical system he began to work out for himself under the influence of spiritualism. In many ways, this poetry is a return to the vision of his earlier work. The opposition between the worldly-minded man of the sword and the spiritually minded man of God, the theme of The Wanderings of Oisin, is reproduced in A Dialogue Between Self and Soul.

1. The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

"The Second Coming" is a poem written by Irish poet W. B. Yeats in 1919, first printed in The Dial in November 1920, and afterwards included in his 1921 collection of verses Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and Second Coming to allegorically describe the atmosphere of post-war Europe. It is considered a major work of modernist poetry and has been reprinted in several collections, including The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.

Historical context

The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence that followed the Easter Rising, at a time before the British Government decided to send in the Black and Tans to Ireland. Yeats used the phrase "the second birth" instead of "the Second Coming" in his first drafts. 

The poem is also connected to the 1918–1919 flu pandemic: In the weeks preceding Yeats's writing of the poem, his pregnant wife Georgie Hyde-Lees caught the virus and was very close to death. The highest death rates of the pandemic were among pregnant women—in some areas, they had up to a 70 percent death rate. While his wife was convalescing, he wrote "The Second Coming".

Summary

Flying around and around in a widening spiral, a falcon can no longer hear the call of its owner. Things are breaking down, and their foundation is giving way. Pure destruction and lawlessness have spread across the world, and so has a tidal wave darkened by blood. All the rituals of innocence have been swallowed by this tide. The best people aren't motivated to act, but the worst people are impassioned and eager.

Some kind of revelation has to happen soon, and the Second Coming itself must be close. Excitedly, the speaker exclaims: "The Second Coming!" But just as the speaker says this, a vision comes to the speaker from the world's collective unconscious. The speaker sees a barren desert land, where a creature with a man's head and a lion's body is coming to life. Its expression is, like the sun, empty and without pity. Its legs are moving slowly, and all around it fly the shadows of disturbed desert birds. Everything becomes dark again, but the speaker knows something new: two thousand years of calm have been irreversibly disrupted by the shaking of a cradle. The speaker asks: what beast, whose time has finally come, is dragging itself towards Bethlehem, where it will be born.

Themes

A) Civilization, Chaos, and Control

“The Second Coming” presents a nightmarish apocalyptic scenario, as the speaker describes human beings’ increasing loss of control and tendency towards violence and anarchy. Surreal images fly at the reader thick and fast, creating an unsettling atmosphere that suggests a world on the brink of destruction.

Yet for all its metaphorical complexity, “The Second Coming” actually has a relatively simple message: it basically predicts that time is up for humanity, and that civilization as we know it is about to be undone. Yeats wrote this poem right after World War I, a global catastrophe that killed millions of people. Perhaps it’s unsurprising, then, that the poem paints a bleak picture of humanity, suggesting that civilization’s sense of progress and order is only an illusion.

With the above in mind, the first stanza’s challenging imagery starts to make more sense. The “falconer,” representing humanity’s attempt to control its world, has lost its “falcon” in the turning “gyre” (the gyre is an image Yeats uses to symbolize grand, sweeping historical movements as a kind of spiral). These first lines could also suggest how the modern world has distanced people from nature (represented here by the falcon). In any case, it’s clear that whatever connection once linked the metaphorical falcon and falconer has broken, and now the human world is spiraling into chaos.

Indeed, the poem suggests that though humanity might have looked like it was making progress over the past “twenty centuries”—via seemingly ever-increasing knowledge and scientific developments, for example—the First World War proved people to be as capable of self-destruction as ever. “Anarchy” was “loosed upon the world,” along with tides of blood (which clearly evoke the mass death of war). “Innocence” was just a “ceremony,” now “drowned.” The “best” people lack “conviction,” which suggests they're not bothering to do anything about this nightmarish reality, while the “worst” people seem excited and eager for destruction. The current state of the world, according to the speaker, proves that the "centre"—that is, the foundation of society—was never very strong.

In other words, humanity’s supposed arc of progress has been an illusion. Whether the poem means that humanity has lost its way or never knew it to begin with is unclear, but either way the promises of modern society—of safety, security, and human dignity—have proven empty. And in their place, a horrific creature has emerged—a grotesque perversion of the “Second Coming” promised by Christianity, during which Jesus Christ is supposed to return to the earth and invite true believers to heaven. This Second Coming is clearly not Jesus, but instead a “rough beast” that humanity itself has woken up (perhaps, the first stanza implies, by the incessant noise of its many wars).

With this final image of the beast, the poem indicates that while humanity seemed to get more civilized in the 2,000 years that followed Christ's birth, in reality people have been sowing the seeds of their own destruction all along. This “rough beast” is now “pitilessly” slouching toward the birthplace of Jesus—likely in order to usher in a new age of “darkness” and “nightmare.”

B) Morality and Christianity

“The Second Coming” offers an unsettling take on Christian morality, suggesting that it is not the stable and reliable force that people believe it to be. The poem clearly alludes to the biblical Book of Revelation from the start, in which, put simply, Jesus returns to Earth to save the worthy. According to the Bible, this is meant to happen when humanity reaches the end times: an era of complete war, famine, destruction and hatred. The poem suggests that the end times are already happening, because humanity has lost all sense of morality—and perhaps that this morality was only an illusion to begin with.

In the first stanza, the speaker describes the chaos, confusion, and moral weakness that have caused “things” to “fall apart.” In the second, the poem makes it clear that it’s a specifically Christian morality that is being undone. In describing this wide-ranging destruction, the poem asks whether Christian morality was built on weak foundations in the first place—that is, perhaps humanity was never really moral, but just pretended to be.

The first stanza's imagery develops this sense of morality being turned upside down: good and evil (the "best" and "worst") are no longer the reliable categories that they once were, replaced by “mere anarchy” (“mere” means something like “pure” here). Humanity has drenched itself in blood—the “blood-dimmed tide”—suggesting that morality was only ever a “ceremony,” a performance that conjured the illusion that humankind was "innocent."

What's more, the poem suggests that no one—not even Jesus—can remedy this bleak reality. The biblical Book of Revelation predicts a kind of final reckoning in which people essentially get what they deserve based on their moral behavior and religious virtues; it indicates that Jesus will come to save those who are worthy of being saved. But “The Second Coming” offers no such comfort.

Instead, in the first line of the second stanza the poem hints that a moment of divine intervention must be at hand after the chaos of the first stanza ("surely some revelation is at hand"). And, as it turns out, "some revelation" is at hand. But rather than returning the world to peace, this new revelation makes things worse: a new and grotesque beast heads toward Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, to be brought into the world. If Jesus was the figurehead for a moral movement, this new beastly leader is the figurehead of a new world of “anarchy,” in which the “best” people (likely the most moral people) lack the courage of their convictions and the “worst” are allowed to thrive. In other words, the poem portrays Christian morality and prophecy as weak, or even proven false, in the face of the violence and destruction that humans have created.

The “blank gaze” of this new creature provides further evidence of just how hopeless the situation is. This being might have the head of a “man,” but it doesn’t have moral sense—instead, it is “pitiless.” It is arriving to preside over “blood-dimmed tide[s]” and “drowned’ “innocence”—not a world of kindness, charity, and justice. Its sphinx-like appearance is also deliberately at odds with Christian imagery, which further suggests a break with Christian morality. Meanwhile, the “Spiritus Mundi” mentioned by the poem is what Yeats thought of as the world’s collective unconscious, from which the poet could draw insight. This vision of the beast, then, is suggestive of a worldwide shift into “anarchy,” as the collective mind of humanity lets go of morality.

“The Second Coming” is a deeply ambiguous poem. Indeed, Yeats revised specific cultural references out of the poem before its publication. But there’s no mistaking that this is a bleak vision of the future of humankind, one which presents morality as a kind of collective dream that is now turning into a nightmare.

Reading ‘The Second Coming’ as a Pandemic Poem

Elizabeth Outka, a literary scholar whose fortuitously timed late-2019 book Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature explains quite a bit. The book looks at the small group of authors who addressed the pandemic head-on in their work but also argues that the work of some of the greats—T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, William Butler Yeats—was deeply affected by the flu in ways that aren’t so immediately obvious. Combining literary analysis with flu history and writing by flu survivors, Outka makes it clear that the pandemic wasn’t “forgotten”—it just went underground.

We spoke recently about the narrative impossibility of viruses, the mental health struggles of flu survivors, and the pervasive presence of something Outka calls “contagion guilt.” Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Diseases are recorded differently by our minds than something like a war. By their nature, diseases are highly individual. Even in a pandemic situation, you’re fighting your own internal battle with the virus, and it’s individual to you. Many, many people in a pandemic situation may be fighting that same battle, but it’s strangely both individualized and widespread.

A pandemic’s enormous impact is just not necessarily one that’s recorded in the ways we expect history to be recorded. You can record the economic loss; you can count the bodies—though that can be difficult, too. You can study the science of the virus, but there’s a difficulty with making the loss visible.

Of course, that’s one of the reasons we have memorials to people who died in wars—to take something not quite tangible and turn it into something people can see. I think with diseases that can be difficult to do. Diseases often impact bodies in ways that are difficult to define. Viruses are invisible, contagion can often be tracked generally but not specifically. I think these are all things that feed into this.

It’s difficult to memorialize a pandemic, because disease makes people feel helpless, and there’s very little we can do to make meaning from it. With war, even if you disagree with the war, you could at least argue about whether the death was worth it. Did this sacrifice keep a soldier’s family safe? With an infectious disease, if you die, your family is more likely to die. There’s no sacrificial structure to build around a loss of this kind. It’s simply a tragedy.

My (Elizabeth Outka) specialty is literature, and literature is especially good at capturing these elements of disease that are difficult to represent. Our bodies’ perception of the world depends on the health of the body and the experiences of that body. There’s that sort of invisible, strange conversation that happens between the body and the mind. Literature can capture that.

Literature can also capture the way a loss of a loved one lives on in all those very small gestures … you turn around and no one is there as you’re brushing your teeth—all these small, terrible, but largely invisible losses, except to the individual.

You have a number of people in the book who are familiar modernist artists and writers, big names like T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and W.B. Yeats, whose experiences with the flu were—you’re arguing—foundational to some of the art they made afterward. Can you talk a little bit about how that worked for these people?

These (T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and W.B. Yeats ) people had intimate ties with the flu and the pandemic, in different ways. I (Elizabeth Outka) looked closely at the works they made that came out in the immediate aftermath, and I started to see that in their sensory and emotional atmosphere and climate, the flu had an influence.

A really important, big work of literature will always be about many things. “The Wasteland,” Mrs. Dalloway, “The Second Coming” … I’m not claiming that they are secretly only “about the pandemic.” I’m saying that like all great works, they are channeling the zeitgeist of the moment. The elements of the pandemic—the immediate experience of the body; the aftermath of it, how the body was exhausted—the works speak to this.

So for example, the Yeats poem “The Second Coming” [that’s the one that starts: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer”]. That’s a canonical poem. He wrote it in 1919, and it has been read, quite rightly, as sort of a poem that captures the terrible aftermath of world war, and all the revolutions that were going on at the time, the political violence in Ireland, the Black-and-Tans … all this violence.

But in the weeks preceding his writing of the poem, his wife, George, who was pregnant, caught the virus and was very close to death. The highest death rates of the 1918–19 pandemic were among pregnant women—in some areas, it was an up to 70 percent death rate for these women. Just really terrible. He was watching this happen, and while his wife was convalescing, he sits down and writes “The Second Coming.”

When you read it through the lens of the pandemic, this other poem begins to emerge. You could see the way such a poem could resonate with people who’ve experienced this pandemic. This atmosphere—things are falling apart; the center cannot hold—an atmosphere of “mere anarchy, loosed upon the world.”

The specific imagery like the “blood-dimmed tide”—when one of the most frequent effects of this flu was bleeding from the nose, mouth, and ears. Just floods of blood. And then, the way people drowned in their beds, from their lungs filling up with fluid … and he has a line about the “ceremony of innocence being drowned,” when it’s his wife and unborn baby who were in the process of drowning like that.

Now, did Yeats have this at the top of his mind when he was writing the poem? We don’t know, but it certainly captures that horror, and that delirium.

2. On being asked for a War Poem

I think it better that in times like these

A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth

We have no gift to set a statesman right;

He has had enough of meddling who can please

A young girl in the indolence of her youth,

Or an old man upon a winter’s night.

Summary

‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’ is a poem by W. B. Yeats, written in 1915 and published the following year. It’s one of Yeats’s shortest well-known poems, comprising just six lines, and sets out why Yeats chooses not to write a ‘war poem’ for publication. Before we analyse ‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’, here’s a reminder of the text of the poem.

"On being asked for a War Poem" is a poem by William Butler Yeats written on February 6, 1915 in response to a request by Henry James that Yeats compose a political poem about World War I. Yeats changed the poem's title from "To a friend who has asked me to sign his manifesto to the neutral nations" to "A Reason for Keeping Silent" before sending it in a letter to James, which Yeats wrote at Coole Park on August 20, 1915. The poem was prefaced with a note stating: "It is the only thing I have written of the war or will write, so I hope it may not seem unfitting." The poem was first published in Edith Wharton's The Book of the Homeless in 1916 as "A Reason for Keeping Silent". When it was later reprinted in The Wild Swans at Coole, the title was changed to "On being asked for a War Poem".

Critical Analysis

Introduction

There is something of a contradiction to this poem: in a war poetry collection, it is a poem that refuses to speak about war. The poem says that it is not the place of a poet to write about politics, but that the poet instead should limit his interference in the world to pleasing his companions. 

Structure notes

This poem is a sextet, with a rhyme scheme ABC, ABC. The rst three lines refer to the poet’s attitude to writing about war; the next three lines write on the self-imposed limits of the poet’s interventions in the world.  

‘On Being Asked For a War Poem’

This poem was written after Yeats was asked to write a war poem. It is a meditation on whether poets can write war poetry. It also considers an old question: what is the role of the poet in society, and what is the function of poetry? Shelley, a great Romantic poet, once called poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world” (meaning that poets create a culture or spirit of an age that molds its thinkers and even politicians, an “inuence that moves not, but moves”: you can read a contemporary poet’s take on the role of poetry in the Guardian, here). An ancient philosopher, Plato, even thought that poetry should be banned as corrupting to society. Yeats here enters this long standing argument in the modern age. “I think it better…a poet’s mouth be silent”: The opening statement is forthright and conversational about “times like these '', or times of war- the enjambment, or running over the end of line, mimics everyday speech. When the poet writes of “a poet’s mouth” being silent, he is using a technique called metonymy. Like metaphor, metonymy substitutes one thing for another. Metaphor does this by contrasting dierent things (“He was an animal”) but in metonymy, something closely related to something else is substituted. For example: “the crown” may refer to the Queen or royalty, or “the press” may to refer to the newspapers. Both are closely connected. Here, the “poet’s mouth” represents (because it speaks) his poetry. “We have no gift to set a statesman right;” A statesman is a political leader. Here, it is asserted that poets have no “gift”, or ability, to tell statesman how they should make decisions. This seems to say that poetry has no place in intervening in politics, and the poet no role in making big statements about wars and what causes them. Note the semi-colon: this opening statement about the world in the macrocosm ends here. “meddling”: Another word for interfering. This key word in the poem gives us a hint of the poet’s attitude to those who try and write activist or political poems: they are ‘meddlers’, troublesome interferers. The tone is obviously negative. “Meddling” in the lives of old men and young girls carries a lighter and happier tone however- a sense of play. “He… can please a young girl in the indolence of her youth”: A quick change in imagery and reference point, from the macrocosm to the microcosm, from the world of politics to the world of intimate acquaintances. The new scene is lazy (“indolence”), relaxed, one of beauty (“youth”) and innocence. “an old man on a winter’s night”: this completes the scope of the poet’s inuence. Does this mean that poetry is suited to everyday lessons and life? That the poet’s role is to appeal to beauty and wisdom, youth and age? These certainly seem narrower limits to the role of poetry than ‘setting statesmen right’. Yeats, however, would surely argue that poetry’s concerns are higher than political contingency.

Critical Study

‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’ is a poem about refusing to write a war poem when asked to produce one. This odd act of refusal-as-assent – writing a poem, but a poem which takes a stand against writing a certain kind of poem – has the air of irony about it, and Yeats probably intended his poem to be taken as a brief ‘thanks, but no thanks’.

In terms of its form, the poem is written in iambic pentameter, rhymed abcabc. The final two lines are the only ones which might cause some real head-scratching from readers (and critics), but Yeats appears to be making an appeal to the broad readership that poetry (including his poetry, by 1915) enjoyed: young girls might enjoy his romantic verses about old Ireland, while an old man might enjoy the ballads.

But why that title? Who has ‘asked [Yeats] for a war poem’? It was the American novelists, Henry James and Edith Wharton – who were good friends and who both came to live in Britain – who approached him: Wharton was editing an anthology, The Book of the Homeless, the profits from which would go towards helping refugees of the war. That anthology appeared in 1916, complete with Yeats’s contribution, which appeared under the alternative title ‘A Reason for Keeping Silent’.

Why did Yeats refuse to write a ‘war poem’? In February 1915, Yeats had written to his friend Lady Gregory: ‘I suppose, like most wars it is at root a bagman’s war, a sacrifice of the best for the worst. I feel strangely enough most for the young Germans who are now being killed.’ Yeats goes on to say that the ‘bespectacled’ Germans he has seen remind him more of himself than the English soldiers (‘footballers’) or the French troops.

In a letter of the same year, sent to John Quinn, Yeats wrote that the First World War was ‘merely the most expensive outbreak of insolence and stupidity the world has ever seen and I give it as little thought as I can.’ These remarks leave us in little doubt about how Yeats viewed the conflict, and help to explain why he wrote ‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’.

And then there is ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’, in which an Irish pilot fighting for Britain in the First World War predicts that he will die in that war, but he feels no sense of patriotic duty towards Britain, the country he fights for. He is fighting for Britain because, although he is Irish, Ireland was under British rule at the time. Instead, he identifies as an Irish patriot, rather than a British one.

‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’ could be productively analysed alongside ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’, for this reason. Yeats objected to the war, and could not imagine using poetry to wave the flag for the right ‘side’ (and his Irish blood would have boiled at the idea of writing a patriotic poem in support of the British troops in the war!). His line ‘We have no gift to set a statesman right’ is a forerunner to Auden’s famous line that ‘poetry makes nothing happen’, and the similarity is no coincidence: Auden makes that well-known statement in his elegy for W. B. Yeats, written in 1939.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the analysis highlights William Butler Yeats's enduring legacy as a poet, dramatist, and key figure in 20th-century literature. Through his exploration of Irish mythology, symbolism, and political themes, Yeats crafted a body of work that continues to resonate with readers today. His mastery of traditional forms, coupled
with his innovative use of symbolism and imagery, distinguishes him as a poet of exceptional skill and depth. Furthermore, the analysis underscores the profound impact of historical events, such as the First World War and the flu pandemic, on Yeats's writing, illustrating how personal experiences and societal upheavals influenced his artistic vision.
 

Reference 

• Griffiths, GM. “On Being Asked For a War Poem – W.B. Yeats.” Move Him Into The Sun, 18 February 2011, https://movehimintothesun.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/on-being-asked-for-a-war-poem-w-b-yeats/. Accessed 5 May 2024.

• Onion, Rebecca. 1918 flu cultural memory: Elizabeth Outka finds the pandemic in literature., 3 May 2020, https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/05/1918-pandemic-cultural-memory-literature-outka.html. Accessed 5 May 2024.

• Tearle, Oliver. “A Short Analysis of W. B. Yeats' 'On Being Asked for a War Poem.'” Interesting Literature, 1 June 2020, https://interestingliterature.com/2020/06/wb-yeats-being-asked-war-poem-analysis/. Accessed 5 May 2024.

• Yeats, WB. “The Second Coming (poem).” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_%28poem%29. Accessed 5 May 2024.

• Yeats, William Butler. “The Second Coming Poem Summary and Analysis.” LitCharts, https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/william-butler-yeats/the-second-coming. Accessed 5 May 2024.

Assignment paper no.107: "Character Dynamics and Symbolism in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four"

Personal Information

Name:- Unnati Baroliya 

Batch:- M.A. Sem 2 (2023-2025)

Enrollment Number:- 5108230002

E-mail Address:- unnatibaroliya@gmail.com 

Roll Number:- 26


Assignment Details

Topic:-"Character Dynamics and Symbolism in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four"

Paper & subject code:- 107: The Twentieth Century Literature: From World War II to the End of the Century 

Submitted to:- Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, MKBU, Bhavnagar

Date of Submission:- April 26, 2024

Keywords

Character Analysis, The Glass Paperweight and St. Clement’s Church, Big Brother, The place where there is no darkness, The Telescreens, The Red Armed Prole Woman.

Abstract

George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair, was a renowned English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic whose works under the pen name George Orwell are characterized by lucid prose, social criticism, and opposition to totalitarianism. His masterpiece, "Nineteen Eighty-Four," published in 1949, serves as a warning against totalitarianism and has left a lasting impact on literature and popular culture. The novel depicts a dystopian world where the Party governs with absolute control, manipulating language, history, and individuals' thoughts. Through the protagonist Winston Smith, Orwell explores themes of rebellion, oppression, and the power of truth. Other key characters, such as Julia, O'Brien, Big Brother, and Mr. Charrington, contribute to the complex portrayal of a society dominated by fear and surveillance. Symbolism, including Big Brother, the glass paperweight, and the telescreens, enriches the narrative, highlighting the Party's manipulation of reality and the struggle for individual freedom.

Eric Arthur Blair

His time span was from 25 June 1903 to 21 January 1950, was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism.

Orwell produced literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.

Nineteen Eighty-four

Novel by English author George Orwell published in 1949 as a warning against totalitarianism. The chilling dystopia made a deep impression on readers, and his ideas entered mainstream culture in a way achieved by very few books. The book’s title and many of its concepts, such as Big Brother and the Thought Police, are instantly recognized and understood, often as bywords for modern social and political abuses.

Summary

The book is set in 1984 in Oceania, one of three perpetually warring totalitarian states (the other two are Eurasia and Eastasia). Oceania is governed by the all-controlling Party, which has brainwashed the population into unthinking obedience to its leader, Big Brother. The Party has created a propagandistic language known as Newspeak, which is designed to limit free thought and promote the Party’s doctrines. Its words include doublethink (belief in contradictory ideas simultaneously), which is reflected in the Party’s slogans: “War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery,” and “Ignorance is strength.” The Party maintains control through the Thought Police and continual surveillance.

The book’s hero, Winston Smith, is a minor party functionary living in a London that is still shattered by a nuclear war that took place not long after World War II. He belongs to the Outer Party, and his job is to rewrite history in the Ministry of Truth, bringing it in line with current political thinking. However, Winston’s longing for truth and decency leads him to secretly rebel against the government. He embarks on a forbidden affair with Julia, a like-minded woman, and they rent a room in a neighbourhood populated by Proles (short for proletariats). Winston also becomes increasingly interested in the Brotherhood, a group of dissenters. Unbeknownst to Winston and Julia, however, they are being watched closely.

When Winston is approached by O’Brien—an official of the Inner Party who appears to be a secret member of the Brotherhood—the trap is set. O’Brien is actually a spy for the Party, on the lookout for “thought-criminals,” and Winston and Julia are eventually caught and sent to the Ministry of Love for a violent reeducation. The ensuing imprisonment, torture, and reeducation of Winston are intended not merely to break him physically or make him submit but to root out his independence and destroy his dignity and humanity. In Room 101, where prisoners are forced into submission by exposure to their worst nightmares, Winston panics as a cage of rats is attached to his head. He yells out for his tormentors to “Do it to Julia!” and states that he does not care what happens to her. With this betrayal, Winston is released. He later encounters Julia, and neither is interested in the other. Instead Winston loves Big Brother.

Analysis

Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-four as a warning after years of brooding on the twin menaces of Nazism and Stalinism. Its depiction of a state where daring to think differently is rewarded with torture, where people are monitored every second of the day, and where party propaganda trumps free speech and thought is a sobering reminder of the evils of unaccountable governments. Winston is the symbol of the values of civilized life, and his defeat is a poignant reminder of the vulnerability of such values in the midst of all-powerful states.

Characters Study

1) Winston Smith

Orwell’s primary goal in 1984 is to demonstrate the terrifying possibilities of totalitarianism. The reader experiences the nightmarish world that Orwell envisions through the eyes of the protagonist, Winston. His personal tendency to resist the stifling of his individuality, and his intellectual ability to reason about his resistance, enables the reader to observe and understand the harsh oppression that the Party, Big Brother, and the Thought Police institute. Whereas Julia is untroubled and somewhat selfish, interested in rebelling only for the pleasures to be gained, Winston is extremely pensive and curious, desperate to understand how and why the Party exercises such absolute power in Oceania. Winston’s long reflections give Orwell a chance to explore the novel’s important themes, including language as mind control, psychological and physical intimidation and manipulation, and the importance of knowledge of the past.

Apart from his thoughtful nature, Winston’s main attributes are his rebelliousness and his fatalism. Winston hates the Party passionately and wants to test the limits of its power; he commits innumerable crimes throughout the novel, ranging from writing “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” in his diary, to having an illegal love affair with Julia, to getting himself secretly indoctrinated into the anti-Party Brotherhood. The effort Winston puts into his attempt to achieve freedom and independence ultimately underscores the Party’s devastating power. By the end of the novel, Winston’s rebellion is revealed as playing into O’Brien’s campaign of physical and psychological torture, transforming Winston into a loyal subject of Big Brother.

One reason for Winston’s rebellion, and eventual downfall, is his sense of fatalism—his intense (though entirely justified) paranoia about the Party and his overriding belief that the Party will eventually catch and punish him. As soon as he writes “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” in his diary, Winston is positive that the Thought Police will quickly capture him for committing thoughtcrime. Thinking that he is helpless to evade his doom, Winston allows himself to take unnecessary risks, such as trusting O’Brien and renting the room above Mr. Charrington’s shop. Deep down, he knows that these risks will increase his chances of being caught by the Party; he even admits this to O’Brien while in prison. But because he believes that he will be caught no matter what he does, he convinces himself that he must continue to rebel. Winston lives in a world in which legitimate optimism is an impossibility; lacking any real hope, he gives himself false hope, fully aware that he is doing so.

2) Julia

Julia is Winston’s lover and the only other person who Winston can be sure hates the Party and wishes to rebel against it as he does. Whereas Winston is restless, fatalistic, and concerned about large-scale social issues, Julia is sensual, pragmatic, and generally content to live in the moment and make the best of her life. Winston longs to join the Brotherhood and read Emmanuel Goldstein’s abstract manifesto; is more concerned with enjoying sex and making practical plans to avoid getting caught by the Party. Winston essentially sees their affair as temporary; his fatalistic attitude makes him unable to imagine his relationship with Julia lasting very long. Julia, on the other hand, is well adapted to her chosen forms of small-scale rebellion. She claims to have had affairs with various Party members, and has no intention of terminating her pleasure-seeking, or of being caught (her involvement with Winston is what leads to her capture). is a striking contrast to Winston: apart from their mutual sexual desire and hatred of the Party, most of their traits are dissimilar, if not contradictory

3) O'Brien

One of the most fascinating aspects of 1984 is the manner in which Orwell shrouds an explicit portrayal of a totalitarian world in an enigmatic aura. While Orwell gives the reader a close look into the personal life of Winston Smith, the reader’s only glimpses of Party life are those that Winston himself catches. As a result, many of the Party’s inner workings remain unexplained, as do its origins, and the identities and motivations of its leaders. This sense of mystery is centralized in the character of O’Brien, a powerful member of the Inner Party who tricks Winston into believing that he is a member of the revolutionary group called the Brotherhood. O’Brien inducts Winston into the Brotherhood. Later, though, he appears at Winston’s jail cell to abuse and brainwash him in the name of the Party. During the process of this punishment, and perhaps as an act of psychological torture, O’Brien admits that he pretended to be connected to the Brotherhood merely to trap Winston in an act of open disloyalty to the Party.

This revelation raises more questions about O’Brien than it answers. Rather than developing as a character throughout the novel, O’Brien actually seems to un-develop: by the end of the book, the reader knows far less about him than they previously had thought. When Winston asks O’Brien if he too has been captured by the Party, O’Brien replies, “They got me long ago.” This reply could signify that O’Brien himself was once rebellious, only to be tortured into passive acceptance of the Party. One can also argue that O’Brien pretends to sympathize with Winston merely to gain his trust. Similarly, one cannot be sure whether the Brotherhood actually exists, or if it is simply a Party invention used to trap the disloyal and give the rest of the populace a common enemy. The novel does not answer these questions, but rather leaves O’Brien as a shadowy, symbolic enigma on the fringes of the even more obscure Inner Party.

4) Big Brother

Big Brother is the supreme ruler of Oceania, the leader of the Party, an accomplished war hero, a master inventor and philosopher, and the original instigator of the revolution that brought the Party to power. The Party uses the image of Big Brother to instill a sense of loyalty and fear in the populace. The image appears on coins, on telescreens, and on the large posters which are plastered all over the city with the slogan “Big Brother is watching you.” While these facts are undisputed, much of the rest of Big Brother’s nature is undefined and subject to change, even within the reality of the novel. In fact, part of Winston’s job is to go into old articles and change what Big Brother said in the past to match what he says in the present. Big Brother is merely a convenience that suits the current goals of the Party.

Despite his hugely powerful role in society, Big Brother makes no actual appearance in the novel. Winston never interacts with Big Brother in any way, and in the one scene where Big Brother speaks during the Two Minutes Hate, not only is the reader not told what he says, but Winston observes that nobody present listens to what he says either. The idea of Big Brother is sufficient to keep the people living in a state of fear, and the fact that no one seems to have ever seen him may make him even more effective as a leader. In fact, several passages throughout the book suggest that Big Brother either doesn’t exist, or perhaps never existed, as an actual person. When Winston is held in the Ministry of Love, he has a conversation with O’Brien about the nature of Big Brother. Winston asks O’Brien if Big Brother exists, to which O’Brien replies, “‘Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party.” When Winston asks if Big Brother will ever die, O’Brien simply says, “Of course not. How could he die?”

5) Mr. Charrington

Mr. Charrington can tell Winston about London’s history and share in Winston’s interest in the past. He provides several key resources that facilitate Winston’s various crimes against the Party. Mr. Charrington sells Winston both the blank book which Winston uses to record a diary and the glass paperweight that becomes a symbol of Winston’s connection to a concrete past unaltered by the Party’s propaganda. Mr. Charrington also rents Winston the room where Winston and Julia carry out the bulk of their sexual relationship.

Like O’Brien, Mr. Charrington must be re-assessed two-thirds of the way through the novel, when Winston and the reader learn that Mr. Charrington is a member of the Thought Police. In light of this revelation, all of Mr. Charrington’s interactions with Winston take on a different meaning. Contrary to what we’ve believed so far, Mr. Charrington was never a sympathetic appreciator of the past who identified with Winston’s rebellious spirit. Instead, he was acting as a manipulative agent of the Party laying traps to test how far Winston would go.

When Winston first realizes that Mr. Charrington is a member of the Thought Police, Mr. Charrington’s physical appearance has dramatically transformed. He now appears to be only 35, with black hair and no wrinkles. He strikes Winston as straighter, larger, more alert, and even his accent has disappeared. More than any other character, Mr. Charrington seems to physically represent the unsettling ability of the Thought Police to hide in plain sight and infiltrate the lives of Party members. The moment of Mr. Charrington’s revelation occurs in the transition from Book Two, where Winston leads the best part of his life, to Book Three, where his life becomes a nightmare of torture and horror.

6) Emmanuel Goldstein

Emmanuel Goldstein is introduced as the Enemy of the People during the Two Minutes Hate at the beginning of the novel. He was once an important member of the Party but became a traitor. Although he was sentenced to death, he escaped and formed the Brotherhood, an organized body of rebels committed to the destruction of the Party and the party’s way of life.

Like Big Brother, Goldstein very likely does not exist as an actual person, but rather, is a propaganda tool used by the Party to stir up emotion in the citizens. Goldstein functions as a threatening but ill-defined monster that the Party uses to keep citizens in line and prevent rebellion. Like Eastasia and Eurasia, Goldstein provides the Party with an enemy to act against. When the Party does things that hurt the populace, their actions can be blamed either on terrorist attacks by Goldstein’s followers or on necessary precautions to prevent further attacks.

Goldstein’s most significant contribution to the plot of the novel is as alleged author of the book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. The book contains the truth of the Party as well as a model for how to overthrow them, as is quoted at length in Book Two: Chapter IX of 1984. These sections go into detail about how the Party uses endless war, the manipulation of history, and the threat of the Thought Police to control the population. The book also lays out a hopeful plan of rebellion whereby the tiny resistances made by disobedient Party members eventually accumulate to become powerful enough to tear down the Party.

Winston gets a copy of Goldstein’s book from O’Brien and is hugely affected by what he reads in this book. Although the content of the book seems to be largely accurate to the way the Party really works, we later learn that the book was not written by Goldstein, but by O’Brien and a committee of Party loyalists as another prop and trap for drawing in thought-criminals.

Symbolism

1) Big Brother

Throughout London, Winston sees posters showing a man gazing down over the words “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” everywhere he goes. Big Brother is the face of the Party. The citizens are told that he is the leader of the nation and the head of the Party, but Winston can never determine whether or not he actually exists. In any case, the face of Big Brother symbolizes the Party in its public manifestation; he is a reassurance to most people (the warmth of his name suggests his ability to protect), but he is also an open threat (one cannot escape his gaze). Big Brother also symbolizes the vagueness with which the higher ranks of the Party present themselves—it is impossible to know who really rules Oceania, what life is like for the rulers, or why they act as they do. Winston thinks he remembers that Big Brother emerged around 1960, but the Party’s official records date Big Brother’s existence back to 1930, before Winston was even born.

2) The Glass Paperweight and St. Clement’s Church

By deliberately weakening people’s memories and flooding their minds with propaganda, the Party is able to replace individuals’ memories with its own version of the truth. It becomes nearly impossible for people to question the Party’s power in the present when they accept what the Party tells them about the past—that the Party arose to protect them from bloated, oppressive capitalists, and that the world was far uglier and harsher before the Party came to power. Winston vaguely understands this principle. He struggles to recover his own memories and formulate a larger picture of what has happened to the world. Winston buys a paperweight in an antique store in the prole district that comes to symbolize his attempt to reconnect with the past. Symbolically, when the Thought Police arrest Winston at last, the paperweight shatters on the floor. The old picture of St. Clement’s Church in the room that Winston rents above Mr. Charrington’s shop is another representation of the lost past. Winston associates a song with the picture that ends with the words “Here comes the chopper to chop off your head!” This is an important foreshadow, as it is the telescreen hidden behind the picture that ultimately leads the Thought Police to Winston, symbolizing the Party’s corrupt control of the past.

3) The Place Where There Is No Darkness

Throughout the novel, Winston imagines meeting O’Brien in “the place where there is no darkness.” The words first come to him in a dream, and he ponders them for the rest of the novel. Eventually, Winston does meet O’Brien in "the place where there is no darkness"; instead of being the paradise Winston imagined, it is merely a prison cell in which the light is never turned off. The idea of “the place where there is no darkness” symbolizes Winston’s approach to the future: possibly because of his intense fatalism (he believes that he is doomed no matter what he does), he unwisely allows himself to trust O’Brien, even though inwardly he senses that O’Brien might be a Party operative.

4) The Telescreens

The omnipresent telescreens are the book’s most visible symbol of the Party’s constant monitoring of its subjects. In their dual capability to blare constant propaganda and observe citizens, the telescreens also symbolize how totalitarian government abuses technology for its own ends instead of exploiting its knowledge to improve civilization.

5) The Red-Armed Prole Woman

The red-armed prole woman whom Winston hears singing through the window represents Winston’s one legitimate hope for the long-term future: the possibility that the proles will eventually come to recognize their plight and rebel against the Party. Winston sees the prole woman as a prime example of reproductive virility; he often imagines her giving birth to the future generations that will finally challenge the Party’s authority.

Conclusion

George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" remains a seminal work in literature, offering a stark portrayal of the dangers of totalitarianism and the erosion of individual liberty. Through vivid characters and powerful symbolism, Orwell crafts a chilling narrative that continues to resonate with readers, serving as a cautionary tale against the abuse of power and the suppression of truth. As society grapples with issues of surveillance, censorship, and political control, Orwell's themes of resistance and the pursuit of truth remain as relevant today as they were when the novel was first published. "Nineteen Eighty-Four" stands as a timeless reminder of the importance of vigilance in safeguarding democratic values and preserving the rights of the individual against oppressive regimes.

Reference

• Lowne, Cathy, and George Woodcock. “Nineteen Eighty-four | Summary, Characters, Analysis, & Facts.” Britannica, 29 March 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nineteen-Eighty-four. Accessed 5 May 2024.

• Orwell, George. “1984: Character List.” SparkNotes, https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/characters/. Accessed 5 May 2024.

• Orwell, George. “1984: Symbols.” SparkNotes, https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/symbols/. Accessed 5 May 2024.

Assignment paper no.108: Reflections on Choice and Uncertainty in Robert Frost's Poetry

Personal Information

Name:- Unnati Baroliya 

Batch:- M.A. Sem 2 (2023-2025)

Enrollment Number:- 5108230002

E-mail Address:unnatibaroliya@gmail.com 

Roll Number:- 26

Assignment Details

Topic:- Reflections on Choice and Uncertainty in Robert Frost's Poetry

Paper & subject code:- 108: The American Literature 

Submitted to:- Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, MKBU, Bhavnagar

Date of Submission:- April 26, 2024

Abstract

This analysis delves into two iconic poems by Robert Frost: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and "The Road Not Taken." The exploration highlights thematic elements, including the tension between nature and society, social obligation versus personal desire, hesitation and choice, as well as the broader themes of individualism, nonconformity, and the making of meaning. Through close examination of the poems' language and structure, the study reveals the complexity of Frost's work and the enduring questions it poses about human existence and decision-making.

Keywords 

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Nature Vs. Society, social obligation vs. Personal desires, Hesitation and choice, 'The Road not Taken', choices and Uncertainty, individualism and Nonconformity, making meaning. 

Robert Lee Frost

His time span was from March 26, 1874 to January 29, 1963 was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.

Frequently honored during his lifetime, Frost is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution". He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. On July 22, 1961, Frost was named poet laureate of Vermont.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

BY ROBERT FROST

Whose woods these are I think I know.  

His house is in the village though;  

He will not see me stopping here  

To watch his woods fill up with snow.  

 

My little horse must think it queer  

To stop without a farmhouse near  

Between the woods and frozen lake  

The darkest evening of the year.  

 

He gives his harness bells a shake  

To ask if there is some mistake.  

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.  

 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,  

But I have promises to keep,  

And miles to go before I sleep,  

And miles to go before I sleep.


Summary

The speaker thinks about who owns the woods that he or she is passing through, and is fairly sure of knowing the landowner. However, the owner's home is far away in the village, and thus he is physically incapable of seeing the speaker pause to watch the snowfall in the forest.
The speaker thinks his or her horse must find it strange to stop so far from any signs of civilization. Indeed, they are surrounded only by the forest and a frozen lake, on the longest night of the year.

The horse shakes the bells on its harness, as if asking if the speaker has made a mistake by stopping. The only other sound besides the ringing of these bells is that of the wind and falling snowflakes, which the speaker likens to the feathers of goose down. The speaker finds the woods very alluring, drawn both to their darkness and how vast and all-encompassing they seem. However, the speaker has obligations to fulfill elsewhere. Thus, though he or she would like to stay and rest, the speaker knows there are many more miles to go before that will be possible.

Themes

A) Nature vs. Society

In “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” the speaker describes stopping to watch the snow fall while riding a horse through the woods at night. While alone in the forest, the speaker reflects on the natural world and its implicit contrast with society. Though Frost’s poem resists a definitive interpretation, the natural world it depicts is at once “lovely” and overwhelming. The fact that it seemingly lures the speaker to linger in the dark and cold suggests that nature is both a tempting and a threatening force, a realm that resists people’s efforts to tame it while also offering respite from the demands of civilized life.
The poem presents the natural world as distinctly separate from human society. The poem begins with the speaker thinking about who owns the property he is passing through—“Whose woods these are I think I know”—yet it’s clear that there's no one there to actually stop the speaker from trespassing. The owner’s “house is in the village,” meaning “he will not see” the speaker. While this owner may think the woods belong to him, he can’t control who passes by “his” land any more than he can stop the woods from “fill[ing] up with snow.” The land owner’s absence and futility, in turn, suggest that the human impulse to dominate the natural world is misguided.

The complete lack of signs of civilization, meanwhile, further emphasizes the distance between society and nature. There are no farmhouses nearby, and the only sound apart from the “harness bells” of the speaker’s horse is that of the wind. Though the speaker acknowledges that, at least conceptually, he or she stands on someone else’s woods, the physical isolation indicates the impotence of conceptual structures like ownership in the first place. In other words, people can say they "own" land all they want, but that doesn't really mean anything when those people aren't around. Far from the sights and sounds of the village, the speaker stands alone “Between the woods and frozen lake” on the “darkest evening of the year.” Together all these details again present nature as a cold and foreboding space distinct from society.

At the same time, however, the woods are “lovely” enough that they tempt the speaker to stay awhile, complicating the idea of nature as an entirely unwelcoming place for human beings. Indeed, though the setting seems gloomy, the speaker also recounts the “sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake.” This language makes the setting seem calm and comforting. The speaker finds the wind “easy” or mellow and the snowflakes “downy,” like the soft feathers that fill a blanket or pillow. Finally, in the final stanza, the speaker definitively says, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep.” This suggests the speaker’s particular interest in the solitude that the woods offers.

Though the speaker knows that he or she “has promises to keep”—suggesting certain societal demands that pull the speaker to continue—the woods are a tempting place to stop and rest. For a moment, the speaker is able to pause for no reason other than to simply watch the falling snow. However raw and cold, then, nature also allows for the kind of quiet reflection people may struggle to find amidst the stimulation of society.

B) Social Obligation vs. Personal Desire

Though the speaker is drawn to the woods and, the poem subtly suggests, would like to stay there longer to simply watch the falling snow, various responsibilities prevent any lingering. The speaker is torn between duty to others—those pesky “promises to keep”—and his or her wish to stay in the dark and lovely woods. The poem can thus be read as reflecting a broader conflict between social obligations and individualism.

This tension between responsibility and desire is clearest in the final stanza. Although “the woods are lovely,” the speaker has other things to which he or she must attend. This suggests that the speaker is only passing through the woods on some sort of business—which, in turn, helps explain how unusual it is that the speaker has stopped to gaze at the forest filling with snow. Indeed, the fact that the speaker’s horse must “think it queer”—even a “mistake”—that they’re stopping implies that the speaker’s world is typically guided by social interaction and regulations, making solitary, seemingly purposeless deeds especially odd. The speaker doesn’t seem to be the kind of person who wastes time or reneges on his promises. However much the speaker might like to stay in the “dark and deep” woods, then, he or she must continue on, once again prioritizing responsibility to others and social convention.

Of course, the speaker seems to show some ambivalence toward these social obligations. The speaker subtly juxtaposes his or her interest in the woods with regret about his or her duties to others: the woods are lovely, “but I have promises to keep.” The promises seem to be a troublesome reality that keeps the speaker from doing what he or she actually wants to do—that is, stay alone in the woods for a little while. Indeed, the specific language that the speaker uses to describe the woods suggests he or she isn’t quite ready to leave. They are “lovely, dark and deep,” implying the woods contain the possibility for respite from the comparatively bright and shallow world of human society. Social responsibilities thus inhibit the chance for meaningful reflection.

Additionally, the image of snow’s “downy flake” suggests that the speaker is as attracted to the woods as one might be to a comfortable bed. In fact, the speaker seems wearied by travel and social obligation, and the woods seem to represent his or her wish to rest. But this wish cannot be realized because of the oppressive “miles to go,” which must be traveled as a result of duty to others (i.e., in order to "keep" those "promises"). Thus, the final lines may suggest the speaker’s weariness both toward the physical journey that remains and the social rules that drive that very journey forward in the first place.

Ultimately, we don't know if the speaker satisfies his or her social duties or remains in the woods. On the one hand, the admittance of having “promises to keep” can be read as the speaker accepting that social obligations trump individual wishes. Yet it's also possible to read the final lines as the speaker’s continued hesitation; perhaps the speaker is thinking about the miles left to go but not yet doing anything about it, instead remaining torn between the tiresome duties of society and the desire for individual freedom that is manifested in the woods.

C) Hesitation and Choice

Throughout the poem, the speaker seems to be stuck in a space in between society’s obligations and nature’s offer of solitude and reflection. Though the speaker reflects on the possibilities offered by each, he or she is ultimately never able to choose between them. In fact, the speaker’s literal and figurative placement seems to suggest that choice itself might not even be possible, because societal rules and expectations restrict the speaker's free will. In other words, beyond exploring the competing pulls of responsibility and personal desire on the speaker, the poem also considers the nature—or mere possibility—of choice itself.
The speaker starts and ends the poem in a state of hesitation. In the first line, the speaker says, “Whose woods these are I think I know,” a statement which wavers between a sure declaration (“I know”) and doubt (“I think”). This may suggest that the central conflict of the poem will be the speaker’s battle with uncertainty. The physical setting of the poem, in which a speaker stops partway through a journey, mirrors this irresolution, finding the speaker neither at a destination nor a point of departure but rather somewhere in between.

The speaker also notably pauses “between the woods and frozen lake”—literally between two landmarks. On top of that, the speaker has stopped on the “darkest evening of the year.” If we understand this to mean the Winter Solstice, then the poem also occurs directly between two seasons, autumn and winter. Thus, the speaker is physically poised on the brink between a number of options, suggesting the possibility of choice between physical worlds, and, later in the poem, between duty to others and a personal wish to rest in solitude.

However, it's unclear in the end if the speaker chooses to fulfill his or her "promises" or merely accepts the obligation to do so as an incontrovertible fact of life; that is, whether he or she actively makes a choice to continue or accepts that there is no choice at all. Though the speaker seems to indicate in the end that he or she will continue on and keep his or her promises, this doesn’t seem to be a straightforward decision. In fact, it may not be a decision at all, but rather an embittered consent to the rules of societal life. The speaker may very well wish to stay in the “lovely” woods, but is ultimately unable to do so.

However, we can also read the final stanza as demonstrating that the speaker hasn't left the woods yet. Although he or she has obligations, there are “miles to go,” and the dreamy repetition of the final lines could suggest that there are either too many miles left to travel, or even that the speaker is slipping into sleep—effectively refusing to make a choice (or implicitly choosing to stay, depending on your interpretation).
Thus, it is possible to read the entire poem as embodying a moment of hesitation, wavering between two poles but never leaning toward one or the other. This would further complicate the outcome of the poem, resisting a definitive reading and suggesting that the tensions between society and nature, and between obligation and individualism, are never black-and-white, but constantly in a murky state of flux.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.


Overview

Written in 1915 in England, "The Road Not Taken" is one of Robert Frost's—and the world's—most well-known poems. Although commonly interpreted as a celebration of rugged individualism, the poem actually contains multiple different meanings. The speaker in the poem, faced with a choice between two roads, takes the road "less traveled," a decision which he or she supposes "made all the difference." However, Frost creates enough subtle ambiguity in the poem that it's unclear whether the speaker's judgment should be taken at face value, and therefore, whether the poem is about the speaker making a simple but impactful choice, or about how the speaker interprets a choice whose impact is unclear.


Summary

The speaker, walking through a forest whose leaves have turned yellow in autumn, comes to a fork in the road. The speaker, regretting that he or she is unable to travel by both roads (since he or she is, after all, just one person), stands at the fork in the road for a long time and tries to see where one of the paths leads. However, the speaker can't see very far because the forest is dense and the road is not straight.

The speaker takes the other path, judging it to be just as good a choice as the first, and supposing that it may even be the better option of the two, since it is grassy and looks less worn than the other path. Though, now that the speaker has actually walked on the second road, he or she thinks that in reality the two roads must have been more or less equally worn-in.
Reinforcing this statement, the speaker recalls that both roads were covered in leaves, which had not yet been turned black by foot traffic. The speaker exclaims that he or she is in fact just saving the first road, and will travel it at a later date, but then immediately contradicts him or herself with the acknowledgement that, in life, one road tends to lead onward to another, so it's therefore unlikely that he or she will ever actually get a chance to return to that first road.

The speaker imagines him or herself in the distant future, recounting, with a sigh, the story of making the choice of which road to take. Speaking as though looking back on his or her life from the future, the speaker states that he or she was faced with a choice between two roads and chose to take the road that was less traveled, and the consequences of that decision have made all the difference in his or her life.


Themes
A) Choices and Uncertainty

In "The Road Not Taken," the speaker describes him or herself as facing a choice between which of two roads to take. The speaker's choice functions as an extended metaphor for all the choices that the speaker—and all people—must make in life. Through the speaker's experience, the poem explores the nature of choices, and what it means to be a person forced to choose (as all people inevitably are).
The poem begins with the speaker recounting the experience of facing the choice of which road to take. The speaker's first emotion is "sorrow," as he or she regrets the reality that makes it impossible to "travel both" roads, or to experience both things. The poem makes clear that every choice involves the loss of opportunity and that choices are painful because they must be made with incomplete information. The speaker tries to gather as much information as possible by looking "down one [road] as far as I could," but there is a limit to what the speaker can see, as the road is "bent," meaning that it curves, leaving the rest of it out of sight. So the speaker, like anyone faced with a choice, must make a choice, but can't know enough to be sure which choice is the right one. The speaker, as a result, is paralyzed: "long I stood" contemplating which road to choose.
The speaker does eventually choose a road based on which one appears to have been less traveled, but the poem shows that making that choice doesn't actually solve the speaker's problem. Immediately after choosing a road, the speaker admits that the two roads were "worn... really about the same" and that both roads "equally lay" without any leaves "trodden black" by passersby. So the speaker has tried to choose the road that seemed less traveled, but couldn't tell which road was actually less traveled. By making a choice, the speaker will now never get the chance to experience the other road and can never know which was less traveled. The speaker hides from this psychic pain by announcing that he or she is just saving "the first [road] for another day!" But, again, reality sets in: "I doubted if I should ever come back." Every choice may be a beginning, but it is also an ending, and having to choose cuts off knowledge of the alternate choice, such that the person choosing will never know if they made the "right" choice.

The poem ends with the speaker imagining the far future, when he or she thinks back to this choice and believes that it made "all the difference." But the rest of the poem has shown that the speaker doesn't (and can never) know what it would have been like to travel down that other road—and can't even know if the road taken was indeed the one less traveled. And, further, the final line is a subtle reminder that the only thing one can know about the choices one makes in life is that they make “all the difference”—but how, or from what, neither the poem nor life provide any answer.

B) Individualism and Nonconformity

In "The Road Not Taken," the speaker is faced with a choice between two roads and elects to travel by the one that appears to be slightly less worn. The diverging roads may be read as being an extended metaphor for two kinds of life choices in general: the conventional versus the unconventional. By choosing the less-traveled path over the well-traveled path, the speaker suggests that he or she values individualism over conformity.
The speaker, when deciding which road to take, notes that the second is “just as fair” as the first, but that it has “perhaps the better claim, / Because it was grassy and wanted wear.” In other words, the second road had the added benefit of being less well-worn than the first. Notably, this absence of signs of travel is phrased positively rather than negatively. Rather than stating outright that the road looked as if it had not had many travelers, the speaker states that it was “grassy” (a consequence of low foot traffic) and that it “wanted wear” (as if it were almost asking for the speaker to walk on it). The speaker presents nonconformity as a positive trait, and even implies that popularity can make things less appealing: the first road, because of its popularity, lacks the grass that makes the second path so enticing.
Despite the speaker’s preference for nonconformity, though, the poem ultimately remains ambiguous about whether choosing the road “less traveled” necessarily leads to a better or more interesting life. First, the poem questions whether it's actually even possible to identify what is non-conformist. After choosing the road that seems to have been less traveled, the speaker then comments that, in fact, the two roads had been "worn ... really about the same." The speaker seems to sense that though he or she has attempted to take the road "less traveled," there's no actual way to know if it was less traveled.

Second, the poem subtly questions its own final line, in which the speaker asserts that choosing the road he or she did actually take has made "all the difference.” Many readers interpret this final line as being an affirmation of the speaker’s decision to venture off the beaten path. But note that the poem is careful not to state that choosing the road less traveled has necessarily made a positive difference. Further, because the poem has raised the possibility that the path the speaker took was not in fact "less traveled," it also raises the possibility that the speaker is wrong, and taking that particular path can't be said to have made any specific difference at all. There is also a third option offered by the poem, which is that the speaker is correct that choosing that road "made all the difference," but that this "difference" was created not by taking the objectively less traveled path—because no one can measure precisely which path was less traveled—but rather by making the choice to try to take the less traveled path. In this reading, the poem implies that it is the effort made to take the less conventional path that makes the difference.


C) Making Meaning

In “The Road Not Taken,” the speaker must choose between two roads without having complete information about how they differ. Even after having chosen the second road, the speaker is unable to evaluate his or her experience, because the speaker can't know how things would have been different if he or she had chosen the first road. In the final stanza, the speaker imagines him or herself in the distant future looking back on this choice. In this way, the poem engages not just with a choice being made, but with the way that the speaker interprets that choice and assigns it meaning after the fact. It is only when looking back, after all, that the speaker sees the choice of which road to take as having made "all the difference."
Many people read the poem straightforwardly, and believe the choice did make "all the difference." The poem, however, is not clear about whether the speaker's final assertion is true. The speaker explains that he or she chose to take the second road because it seemed more “grassy” and less worn than the first, but soon admits that the two roads were actually worn to "about the same" degree. By raising the question of whether there was actually anything special about the road the speaker chose to take, the poem further questions whether taking the second road could have possibly "made all the difference," or even any difference at all. The poem implies that the speaker in the future may look back and construct a narrative of his or her life that is simpler and cleaner, and which gives this choice more meaning than the truth would support. Using this interpretation, the poem can be read as commenting more broadly on how all people fictionalize their lives by interpreting their choices, in hindsight, as being more purposeful and meaningful than they really are.

The poem can also be read in a third and more positive way, though. In this third interpretation, the poem implies that it’s less important whether the speaker’s choice actually "made all the difference" than it is that he or she believes that it did. In this reading, the poem recognizes that the speaker—and all people—fictionalize their lives by creating meaning where there may not be any, but portrays such meaning-making not as fraudulent, but rather as a part of being human.
All three of these different possible readings co-exist in "The Road Not Taken." The poem does not suggest a solution to the question of the meaning in the speaker's choice, but rather comes to embody the question itself, allowing for contemplation of the mysteries inherent in defining or interpreting a life.

Conclusion

In examining "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and "The Road Not Taken," it becomes evident that Robert Frost's poetry transcends simple narratives to provoke deeper contemplation of the human condition. Frost's exploration of nature, society, choice, and meaning resonates with readers across generations, inviting reflection on the complexities of life's journey. Through rich imagery and nuanced themes, Frost challenges us to consider the interplay between individual agency and societal expectations, the allure of the unknown versus the comfort of familiarity, and the enduring quest for significance in the choices we make. As we navigate the landscapes of Frost's poetry, we are reminded of the timeless truths and enduring ambiguities that shape our experiences, compelling us to ponder the paths we take and the stories we tell about them.

References

• Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken Poem Summary and Analysis.” LitCharts, https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/robert-frost/the-road-not-taken. Accessed 5 May 2024.

• Frost, Robert. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Poem Summary and Analysis.” LitCharts, https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/robert-frost/stopping-by-woods-on-a-snowy-evening. Accessed 5 May 2024.

• “Summary and Analysis of The Road Not Taken.” Literary English, 11 February 2022, https://literaryenglish.com/summary-and-analysis-of-the-road-not-taken/#google_vignette. Accessed 5 May 2024.