Range Finding
Robert Frost is a well-known poet in America, expressing his philosophy through his works. Frost has strong opinions regarding major issues such as war and nature. He addresses these two themes in a poem entitled “Range-Finding”, written in 1916 during the time of World War One. Frost conveys his beliefs through this sonnet’s generic considerations as well as the form, meter, rhyme scheme, figures of speech, and structure. Through its generic considerations and various elements of prosody, “Range-Finding” depicts the character of war and its far-reaching effects on its surroundings, specifically nature. Range-finding is a technique still used by the military today whereby attempts are made to fire large weapons accurately over long distances. It is a process of trial and error in which unintended areas are hit by test rounds. Eventually the various adjustments will hopefully result in an accurate shot which hits the intended target. Frost chooses such a title to call to the attention of his audience the fact that war is anything but perfect, involving many corrections and mistakes. The errors in war have serious consequences found even on the most minute levels of life. . . .
Frost is commenting that even an indifferent and unemotional nature should feel resentment towards the senselessness of such a battle. The diction of the three verbs (rent, cut, and stained) is intentional, all sudden and brief in nature. These words, though not plentiful, effectively disturb the flow of the poem. The words in lines seven and eight are characterized by innocence and a peacefulness that has been breached by man’s violence. One of the first creatures affected by the battle in the poem is a butterfly that has come to rest upon a flower is cut by a passing bullet. The bullet has a different intended target, stressed by the word “passing”(“Range”, 12). However, there are certain words with hard consonants that cause a certain violent interruption in the normally smooth and lively meter. There is no relationship between nature and humans, much less a plutonic bond. One instance is where Frost chooses the verb “cut”(“Range”, 2). The second line describes how a bullet “cut[s] a flower beside a groundbird’s nest”(“Range”, 2). ’s first three lines contain nearly every action attributed to the battle. Following the assault of a passing bullet in its web, the spider finds nothing. Nature, just as a child, is distinguished by its innocence. This form is typically characterized by a love that is plutonic and transcends physical love. A second unknowing victim of a foreign war is a spider that is deceived by the passing bullet, thinking it to be a fly caught in its web.
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