Once By The Pacific Essay, Research Paper
Interpretations of & # 8220 ; Once by the Pacific & # 8221 ;
It is uneven how even recent history can be an vague and tangled muss of colored sentiments and here-say. Yet the hereafter can be mistily foretold in a dark and simple verse form.
Robert Lee Frost was no uncertainty a brilliant poet. As the expression goes, to be great is to be misunderstood. His varied poesy reflected his life, because he used his life as inspiration. We find Frost & # 8217 ; s spectrum runing from simple observations to profound philosophical premises in his personal life and American society, every bit good. & # 8220 ; Once by the Pacific & # 8221 ; could reflect upon several different things.
Nature is a portion of about every one of Frost & # 8217 ; s verse forms. He was an individualist and believed that people could hold their ain personal relationship with God in nature. & # 8220 ; Once by the Pacific & # 8221 ; could besides be interpreted as a distinguishable warning to society that dark times lie in front. The image in the first four lines of this verse form show waves toppling over each other, about contending to acquire to shore and & # 8220 ; make something. . . that H2O ne’er did before & # 8221 ; ( Frost 1134 ) . It is like a competition to see who can alter or make the most devastation to the land. The moving ridges represent the people of society clawing and contending to the best, and in bend, melting in suicide. Yet they, merely as the shore in the verse form, are comforted by a sense of false security. & # 8220 ; The shore was lucky in being backed by a drop, the drop backed by a continent & # 8221 ; ( 1134 ) . We as Americans are vain. We feel that we are indestructible. We are the world power of the universe. This may be true, but who shall salvage us from ourselves? Frost wants seems to believe that it is inevitable that we will self-de
struct. That the “someone” who had better be prepared for fury should read “We” as Americans. Again, it is dry that merely a twelvemonth subsequently following this poem the stock market crashed, directing our state and its substructure into an tumult and about rupturing our society apart. And history has shown that we as Americans have continued this attitude that Frost may hold been mentioning to. Nuclear arms, force, poorness, pollution, and the list go on of ways that we are easy self-destructing. In my sentiment, this is every bit large a challenge to “social order” that Frost could hold perchance offered.
Robert Frost & # 8217 ; s poesy was simple at first glimpse. Just as Frost was a simple adult male on the exterior. He was a husbandman. He traveled a spot, but nil hideous until his ulterior old ages when he became a kind of diplomat. His poesy spoke of simple feeling and simple topic. However, underneath these simple words and this simple adult male lay an interlacing mass of complexness. He wrote about his ain experience. His motivations are merely every bit vague as his method. No 1 could cognize why he wrote what he did, except of class Frost himself. However, that is what makes him so intriguing. We, about half a century subsequently, can associate to this adult male & # 8217 ; s composing nevertheless we deem it necessary. After all, it is poesy. Many loved him, some pitied him, and others disagreed with his dark personal life. No uncertainty about it, though, all respected him and his elegant usage of words. Possibly we should besides esteem his warning, & # 8220 ; before God & # 8217 ; s last Put out the Light is spoken & # 8221 ; ( 1134 ) .
Work Cited
Frost, Robert. Once by the Pacific. The Norton Anthology Literature. Vol. 2. 5th Edition. Ed. Nina Baym et Al. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1998. 1134.
