Introduction
While at first glance Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and Virginia Scott’s Snow are remarkably different, after careful consideration it becomes clear that there is a striking similarity between the poems’ meanings and messages. This paper aims to compare the poems and discuss rhetorical and literary devices used by the authors to tell persuasive stories.
Discussion
Frost’s poem is written in the first character—a horse rider who passes through the wood on “the darkest evening of the year” (Frost, n.d., para. 2). The poem first appeared in the author’s collection New Hampshire in 1923, at the time when many prominent writers and poets tried to re-examine a man’s relationship with nature (Frost, n.d.). Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening fits in the classical tradition of American Poetry of the twentieth century. It is written in iambic pentameter a rhythm pattern of which bears a resemblance to that of a human heartbeat.
The rhythm is reinforced with the repletion of the word “woods” (Frost, n.d., para. 1) that appears four times in the poem. Unlike Snow, which is written in free verse, Frost’s poem is characterized by a consistent meter and peculiar rhyme scheme in which the third stanza lines are unrhymed. The author used this literary device to indicate rhymes of the next stanzas, thereby foreshadowing the speaker’s impending decision. It would be a mistake to read the poem as a story about a traveler who is yearning for the comfort of his habitual environment.
By employing figurative language, Frost tries to suggest that “promises” (Frost, n.d., para. 4) that they must keep representing the unrelenting pull of death, which becomes almost palpable in the frosty woods. The speaker’s mentioning of a long journey ahead of them and “lovely, dark, and deep” (Frost, n.d., para. 4) nature only reinforces this interpretation of the poem. Multiple layers of meaning in Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and skillful use of alliterations and metaphors make the novel a veritable masterpiece.
Just like Frost’s poem, Snow, which was written in 1977, is filled with the images of snow and cold (Roberts & Jacobs, 1998). Snow is everywhere in the poem: on the road, in the fields, near the house, and in the woods. The metaphor of snow is used to suggest danger, which prevents a doe from crossing “the edge of the icy road” (Roberts & Jacobs, 1998, p. 659). It can be argued that a similar sense of danger was felt by the author during the years of the Cold War. By repeatedly mentioning the doe, the author employs anaphora to bring the scene to the end.
The idea of repetition is also evident in Scott’s decision to infuse the poem with timid spirits of the past. Memories of “mother-spirit hovering” and the author’s grandmother are both reminiscent of the allure of death and nature’s cold stillness. These images give depth to Snow and draw a connection between the poem and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. By imbuing her piece with symbolism and metaphors of the past, Scott invites her readers to stand on the edge of her memory for a moment.
Conclusion
After carefully analyzing Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and Virginia Scott’s Snow it becomes clear that despite differences in literary forms, there is a striking similarity between the poems’ meanings and messages.
References
Frost, R. (n.d.). Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
Roberts, E., & Jacobs, H. (1998). Literature: An introduction to reading and writing. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.