Design
by Robert Frost
Summary:
In Frost's first stanza, which is a group of lines in a poem, the speaker opens by describing a white spider hunting a white moth on a heal-all. The heal-all is a flower with medicinal properties. The flower holds the moth, but nothing can stop the dark forces of nature, or in this case, the hungry spider. When the speaker mentions the witches' broth, Frost implies that darkness lurks everywhere. Humanity, according to Frost, is as unprotected as the moth on a flower and as dangerous as the spider.
Analysis:
The poem begins with a simple setup—the first three lines introduce
us to the main characters. We have a big white spider on a white flower,
poised to eat a white moth. The speaker sees this bizarre little albino
meeting as some weird witches' brew, as all three are brought together
for some awful reason.
That observation leads the speaker to a
series of questions: Why is this flower white, when it is usually blue?
What brought the spider to that particular flower? What made the moth
decide to flutter by right then?
Frost concludes that if it were
"design" that brought these three together, it must be some pretty dark
design. In other words, it's not a comforting thought to think that God
went out of his way just to make sure this moth got eaten. But that's
the crucial "if" of the last line: if design does govern these
small things. (What if—gulp—there's no design at all, and everything in
life is just totally random occurrences?) The reader is left with just
as many questions as Frost. This short poem takes a simple little
thought and pushes us all the way to questioning the very nature of
creation and life as we know it.
Sources: http://www.shmoop.com/design-robert-frost/summary.html
http://study.com/academy/lesson/design-by-robert-frost-summary-theme-analysis.html
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