Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening By Robert Frost

1. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening By Robert Frost Jose Rodriguez Esteban Hernandez Jane Bejerano

2. Biography of Robert Frost • A poet born in San Francisco, California on March 26, 1874 and died in Boston, Massachusetts at the age of 89 on January 29, 1963. • Attended Harvard University in 1897. Dropped out after two years due to health concerns. • A winner of four Pulitzer Prizes and was also a special guest at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. • Had a total of six children, two of them had passed away. • Was known for writing about death & darkness.

3. Type of poem, rhyme scheme, and poetic meter. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is a lyric poem that consists of four quatrains. The rhyme scheme is aaba, bbcb, ccdc, dddd. A stanza that has the rhyme scheme, aaba, is known as a Rubaiyat quatrain. This poem has an iambic tetrameter, a line that has four iambs per line.

4. Diction and Tone Diction: Tone: Woods, sweep, easy wind, downy flake, lovely, promises Stopping, snow, queer, without, frozen lake, darkest evening, mistake, dark, sleep The tone is peaceful because like all of us, at some point we feel like we need some time to be alone, away from others to think about situations that are happening in our life.

5. Theme and Literary Devices The main theme of this poem is determination, because he talks about wanting to stay in the woods but he has responsibilities to fulfill before he sleeps. In other words, before he dies. This poem consists of four enjambments located in lines 3, 5, 9, and 11. Symbolism is used in the woods and the frozen lake. The woods is the church and the frozen lake is hell. The last two lines in the fourth stanza are metaphors that mean that he has a lot of things to do before he sleeps for the last time.

6. Interpretation of 1st stanza Whose woods these are I think I know.    His house is in the village though;    He will not see me stopping here    To watch his woods fill up with snow.    He comes upon a church even though the church is in the village. The person he’s talking about is God and he’s saying that God won’t see him stopping by because he needs time to think alone.

7. Interpretation of 2nd stanza My little horse must think it queer    To stop without a farmhouse near    Between the woods and frozen lake    The darkest evening of the year.    The horse must think it’s odd of the master to stop him without a farmhouse in sight. The man is besides the woods and a lake that is frozen. We can infer that “The darkest evening of the year” is the winter solstice, the first day of winter, the time when the Sun is out the shortest.

8. Interpretation of 3rd stanza He gives his harness bells a shake    To ask if there is some mistake.    The only other sound’s the sweep    Of easy wind and downy flake.    The horse shakes his bells to ask his master why they had stopped because the horse doesn’t see a farmhouse. Besides the horse’s bells, the master only hears the wind blowing softly and the quietly soothing sound of the snowflakes falling.

9. Interpretation of 4th 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. God’s house is a very nice place to stay and think about his life but he can’t stay long because he has responsibilities to fulfill. Being how it is, he says he has a long way to go before he dies.

10. El Fin 100%?