ENL 3 + Frost "Design"

English 3 Jan 12 homework

List of Imagery

- Dimpled spider, fat and white

- Holding up a moth

- White piece of rigid satin cloth

- Assorted characters of death and blight

- Witches’ broth

- Snow-drop spider

- Flower like a froth

- Dead wings

- Paper kite

- White

- Wayside blue

- Kindred spider

- White moth

- Design of darkness

- So small

Many of the images in Robert Frost’s poem “Design” are small creatures or objects that have a great deal of detailed design reflected through them. In the octane, Frost is merely observing a spider and a moth on a heal-all. The sextet is Frost questioning his observations about Life’s design affecting the spider, moth and heal-all. The spider is camouflaged on the white heal-all and is holding up the moth as a prize. This scene depicted by Frost is analyzed and broken down to reveal all of the little intricate details of Life’s design. The spider and moth are “assorted characters of death and blight” because the spider is killing the moth just as if it were planned.

The list of ingredients to the “witches brew” is a metaphor for how the whole scenario of this spider and moth are ingredients to Life’s design and everything occurred as intended. Frost is trying to understand what made the spider climb that heal-all to that certain height and capture the white moth in the night. The dark imagery produces an omniscient presence because at first in the octane the imagery is a dark description and gave more of a coincident appearance. Although with a closer look, Frost discovers a hidden agenda that had predetermined that the moth would fly at that specific time and the spider would be at that specific height. However even with such dark imagery there are hints of innocence in the insects and flower being “white.” White symbolizes purity and is intertwined with the concept of innocence. The purity and innocence reveals the other end of designs spectrum. The different use of these extremes implies the wide range of designs that are predetermined.

Just within this minuscule blip of time there is an astonishment of how much planning has gone into something that seems so microscopic. The most powerful imagery in this poem makes the creatures give the impression that they are all pawns in Life’s design.