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Similarly lost in meaning is Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" which is a beautiful poem, but many people don't see the suicidal undertone. I've ha

Similarly lost in meaning is Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" which is a beautiful poem, but many people don't see the suicidal undertone. I've had it memorized for years and only just learned about this.

mkaziz 11y ago
I just reread it and don't detect that undertone. Could you explain it?
- DarkTree 11y ago
  Like all literature, it is easy to draw different meanings from the same words, but most of the suicidal undertone is simply in the last stanza: 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. The narrator has been traveling far to fulfill the promises he made to others. He's looking at the lovely, dark, deep woods and thinking how peaceful they are. The woods are a metaphor for death, which is dark and lovely because you don't have to worry about life's hardships. The miles are not distance, but a metaphor for time. The narrator decides he has to continue on, because he cannot sleep/die before fulfilling his promises to those he made them to. Frost was an amazing writer whose poems beautifully described rural settings. But I think because of his brilliance, it is likely that his poems had deeper meaning than their face-value imagery. But it's also possible that they were one-dimensional, I just doubt it.
  - mkaziz 11y ago
    That's a very interesting explanation. It's much clearer now, thank you!
  - DarkTree 11y ago
    The woods = death Lovely - All your worries and obligations no longer exist Dark - When we imagine the absence of life it's like the absence of light, darkness Deep - Death is deep because it's irreversible and never-ending
  - plonh 11y ago
    That is an allusion to life and death, but I don't see anything about suicide.
ctdonath 11y ago
On a similar note: While in high-school English class taking an exam, in a fit of boredom (having completed it early) I scrawled the Hamlet soliloquy "To be or not to be" (going on for several lines) in the margin. Next morning, the teacher took me aside and asked as gently & tactfully as possible if everything was OK. Momentarily puzzled (yes, everything was fine), the meaning of Hamlet's mutterings suddenly hit me: the lines were not just a vague pontification about life, he was actually contemplating suicide. I assured the concerned teacher everything really was OK.
qq66 11y ago
It's long been one of my two favorite poems, I've heard about this theme of death, and I don't see it. To me, the poem is about the tension between the ephemera of human lives and the permanence of nature... The poem starts with a reference to private land ownership, a decidedly human way of imposing order in the world, and one that will vanish with our society, and ends with a return to human responsibilities. The middle of the poem is a brief escape to the permanence of the earth, the woods that were there before the humans and will be there after the humans.
picklesman 11y ago
I think I now understand why the last line is repeated twice. Seems so obvious in retrospect... (once literally, once metaphorically for his life)

mkaziz 11y ago

I just reread it and don't detect that undertone. Could you explain it?

DarkTree 11y ago
Like all literature, it is easy to draw different meanings from the same words, but most of the suicidal undertone is simply in the last stanza: 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. The narrator has been traveling far to fulfill the promises he made to others. He's looking at the lovely, dark, deep woods and thinking how peaceful they are. The woods are a metaphor for death, which is dark and lovely because you don't have to worry about life's hardships. The miles are not distance, but a metaphor for time. The narrator decides he has to continue on, because he cannot sleep/die before fulfilling his promises to those he made them to. Frost was an amazing writer whose poems beautifully described rural settings. But I think because of his brilliance, it is likely that his poems had deeper meaning than their face-value imagery. But it's also possible that they were one-dimensional, I just doubt it.
- mkaziz 11y ago
  That's a very interesting explanation. It's much clearer now, thank you!
- DarkTree 11y ago
  The woods = death Lovely - All your worries and obligations no longer exist Dark - When we imagine the absence of life it's like the absence of light, darkness Deep - Death is deep because it's irreversible and never-ending
- plonh 11y ago
  That is an allusion to life and death, but I don't see anything about suicide.

ctdonath 11y ago

On a similar note: While in high-school English class taking an exam, in a fit of boredom (having completed it early) I scrawled the Hamlet soliloquy "To be or not to be" (going on for several lines) in the margin. Next morning, the teacher took me aside and asked as gently & tactfully as possible if everything was OK. Momentarily puzzled (yes, everything was fine), the meaning of Hamlet's mutterings suddenly hit me: the lines were not just a vague pontification about life, he was actually contemplating suicide. I assured the concerned teacher everything really was OK.

qq66 11y ago

It's long been one of my two favorite poems, I've heard about this theme of death, and I don't see it. To me, the poem is about the tension between the ephemera of human lives and the permanence of nature... The poem starts with a reference to private land ownership, a decidedly human way of imposing order in the world, and one that will vanish with our society, and ends with a return to human responsibilities. The middle of the poem is a brief escape to the permanence of the earth, the woods that were there before the humans and will be there after the humans.

picklesman 11y ago

I think I now understand why the last line is repeated twice. Seems so obvious in retrospect... (once literally, once metaphorically for his life)