The significance of human contact for Robert Frost was an American poet. Frost has written numerous poems, some of which have been compiled into the Frost collection. In class, we have studied several of the poems and noticed that these poems all have something in common; human contact. Human contact was very important to Frost. He speaks about it in almost all of his essays. When human contact is spoken of, what is actually meant? Physical, emotional or spiritual? With the help of three poems by Frost, I will discuss what kind and why human contact was of significance to Robert Frost. The poems I will make use of in this essay are; 'The road not taken', 'The oven bird' and 'An Old Man's Winter Night'. I will focus only on the human contact parts in the poem and therefore not analyze it as a whole because a lot of the information will be extraneous.
In Frost's poem The Road Not Taken, he talks about two roads merging in a yellow wood. He continues to apologize for not being able to travel both roads. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. And sorry I could not travel both" (136). My first thought when I read this was, whoever he is speaking about is depressed and yearned for human contact. I thought this because It seemed that the person he is speaking about, yearned for human contact so much that he/she wanted to travel both roads at the same time. Unfortunately, this is not possible so he apologizes to him/herself. In the fourth stanza, according to Frost "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by". After reading this I assumed that the character Frost is speaking of has anxiety and is trying to avoid human contact. This is kind of contradictory to what he said before as it seemed that he was rather seeking human contact. It appears that whoever is spoken of looks for human contact at the beginning of his journey but then tries to avoid it at the end of his journey. Maybe he has been hurt by being around people, I cannot really tell by this short poem.
The second poem I will be discussing to explore the significance of human contact for Robert Frost is 'An Old Man's Winter Night'. The theme of this poem is isolation and loneliness. An Old Man's Winter Night by Robert Frost is a poem that speaks of an old man being lonely in his house in the winter. His old age has made...
