Bowman PatriciaFigurative language involves using “figures of speech,” which express ideas in ways that are not meant to be taken literally. For instance, “All the world’s a stage.” Frost referred to these as “figures.” He once stated, “Every poem I write is figurative in two senses. It will have figures in it, of course; but it’s also a figure in itself – a figure for something, and it’s made so that you can get more than one figure out of it” (Cook, Voices, p. 235).
Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech comparing two unlike things. To Frost, metaphor is the essence of poetry. He remarked, “Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, ‘grace metaphors,’ and evolves into the profoundest thinking. Poetry allows us to say one thing and mean another. People ask, ‘Why don’t you say what you mean?’ We never do that, do we? We talk in parables, hints, and indirections, whether from diffidence or some other instinct” (Education by Poetry).
Examples:
- The Silken Tent: A woman is compared to a silken tent, emphasizing her strength and beauty.
- Putting in the Seed: Planting seeds in the spring is likened to making love.
- Devotion: The shore and ocean symbolize a devoted couple.
- To Earthward: The stages of love are stepping stones to death.
- All Revelation: Viewing a geode crystal is like the mind probing the universe.
Simile
A simile explicitly compares two things using words such as “like,” “as,” “than,” or “as if.”
Examples:
- Mending Wall: “like an old-stone savage armed.”
- Stars: “like some snow-white / Minerva’s snow-white marble eyes.”
- Going for Water: “We ran as if to meet the moon / we paused / like gnomes.”
- Birches: “Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair.”
- Hyla Brook: “Like ghost of sleigh bells.”
Symbol
A symbol is an object, person, situation, or action that represents something more abstract. Although Frost was not known as a Symbolist, certain recurring images in his work take on symbolic meanings.
Examples:
- The Road Not Taken: The forked road symbolizes life’s choices.
- Rose Pogonias: Flowers symbolize Frost’s beloved wife, Elinor.
- Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: The journey represents life’s journey, with “dark woods” as a recurring symbol.
- The Pasture and Directive: Springs symbolize origins or sources.
- Come In: The star is a chief symbol in Frost’s poetry.
Personification
Personification attributes human qualities to animals, objects, or ideas.
Examples:
- My November Guest: Sorrow is personified as a woman.
- Mowing: The scythe whispers.
- Range-Finding: The spider sullenly withdraws.
- Tree at my Window: The tree watches him sleep and has tongues talking aloud.
- Storm Fear: The wind works and whispers, the cold creeps, and the storm is personified.
Apostrophe
Apostrophe addresses someone absent, dead, or something nonhuman as if it were alive and present.
Examples:
- Take Something Like a Star: Addresses the star.
- Tree at my Window: Addresses the tree.
- Mending Wall: Speaks to the stones in the barrier.
Synecdoche
Synecdoche mentions a part of something to suggest the whole.
Examples:
- Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: The journey represents life’s journey.
- The Gift Outright: The gift represents U.S. history.
- I Will Sing You One-O: Clock towers represent earthly and heavenly time.
- Kitty Hawk: Man’s first flight represents the yearning for heaven.
- Fire and Ice: The heat of love and cold of hate have cataclysmic power.
Metonymy
Metonymy uses a concept closely related to the actual thing to make the analogy more vivid.
Example:
- Out, Out: The injured boy’s hand “as if to keep / the life from spilling” signifies his bleeding and life in danger.
Allegory or Parable
A narrative with a second meaning beneath the surface one. Frost is known for his use of parables.
Examples:
- After Apple-Picking: Suggests accomplishment.
- The Grindstone: Suggests judgment and recognizing limits.
- The Lockless Door: A story of self-escape.
- Birches: Climbing suggests the value of learning and experience.
- Design: The incident suggests a universal design.
Paradox
A paradox contains apparently contradictory elements that, upon closer inspection, reveal a truth.
Examples:
- Nothing Gold Can Stay: “Green is gold.”
- The Gift Outright: “Found salvation in surrender.”
- Ghost House: “I dwell in a house that vanished.”
- Fire and Ice: “If it had to perish twice.”
- The Tuft of Flowers: “Men work together whether they work together or apart.”
Hyperbole
A bold, deliberate overstatement not intended to be taken literally, used to emphasize a statement’s truth. Rare in Frost, as he prefers fact and truth.
Examples:
- A Star in a Stoneboat: A meteorite is imagined as a fallen star.
- Etherealizing: Reducing oneself to a brain.
- After Apple-Picking: “Ten thousand thousand fruit to touch.”
- Stopping by Woods: The woods filling with snow.
- The Milky Way is a Cowpath (title).
Understatement
Presenting something with underemphasis to achieve a greater effect, often used for irony.
Examples:
- Fire and Ice: Ice “will suffice” for destruction.
- Mowing: “Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak.”
- Hyla Brook: “We love the things we love for what they are.”
- My November Guest: The speaker appreciates the November landscape but leaves praise to his “guest.”
- Brown’s Descent: Farmer Brown, after falling, says, “Ile’s (oil’s) ’bout out!”
Irony
Irony conveys a meaning that contradicts the literal definition. Frost’s irony is subtle and often tricky.
Examples:
- Birches: Dramatic irony in the wish to get away from earth.
- Range-Finding: Irony of situation with the spider and bullet.
- The Road Not Taken: Verbal irony in the speaker’s future story.
- Ghost House: Irony of situation with daylight falling into a dark place meant for survival.
- Stars: Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, with sightless eyes.
