Robert Frost and the Depression

Robert Frost’s poetic images and topics changed as a result of the depression. Reflected in Robert Frost’s poetry lie the feelings and concerns of Americans, expressed through different poetic images and topics. As compared to Robert Frost’s earlier work, which focused on man and nature, Frost’s poems during the Great Depression, shift poetic images and topics to the relationship between man and man. Later in Frost’s life, after the depression, Robert Frost’s themes changed another time to man and God.

Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1874 to Isabelle and William Prescott Frost. In 1885, at age 11, Frost’s father died. As a result Robert moved with his mother and sister Jeanie to Lawrence, Massachusetts. In 1895 Robert married Elanor White, his high school sweetheart, and began a teaching job at a local school. His first son Elliot was born on September 25, 1896 followed by his daughter Leslie on April 28, 1899. In 1899 Frost’s mother Isabelle, his first son Elliot, passed away. In 1902, Elanor gave birth to Frost’s second son, Carol. Frost then decided to move with his wife and daughter to a small farm outside Derry, New Hampshire. In 1905, Elanor had another daughter, Majorie. Following Majori

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However, in 1938, tragedy overshadowed the news of his publication when after an operation to remove cancer, Elanor, passed away. Robert Frost spent most of his life living in New England, and in North of Boston, his main objective is to, “reveal the disease which is eating into New England life or at least rural areas. Industrial stocks were selling at an unheard of 16:1 price to earnings ratio. In the first line “O loud Southwester” refers to the winds from the south west, or the jetstream that picks up the warmth from the Gulf of Mexico to come and melt the snow and expose the earth beneath the snow, so that the flower can grow. ”

“The years between the onset of the Great Depression and 1940 were a time of regression and despair such as the American people have rarely known in their history. Frost wanted to be considered a “poet-teacher”, to make nature speak with a human voice to readers, and a “poet-preacher” to dramatize for the reader the divinity in the face of which belief must be given shape.

In Robert Frost’s earlier works, published before 1929, nearly all of Frost’s poems contain references to nature.

And one of them put me off aim

By hailing cheerily “Hit them Hard!”

I knew pretty well why he dropped behind

And let the other go on a way.

Frost puts emphasis in this poem on the size of the mountain and how it blocks his sight of the western stars in the night sky.

I saw so much before I slept there once:

I noticed that I missed the stars in the west,

Where it’s black body cut into the sky. ” Robert Frost is considered by Pack as one of the greatest American poets to ever live.

Approximate Word count = 2024
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

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