HPAVC/HPAVC CD-ROM.iso/HOMEWORK.ZIP/684.TXT

Text File | 1998-07-25 | 7KB | 122 lines

This file is copyright of Jens Schriver (c)
It originates from the Evil House of Cheat
       More essays can always be found at:
       --- http://www.CheatHouse.com ---
                ... and contact can always be made to:
                    [e-mail]
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Essay Name       : 684.txt
Uploader         : Clif Gordon
Email Address    : [e-mail]
Language         : english
Subject          : Biography
Title            : Robert Frost
Grade            : 95%
School System    : San Diego City Schools
Country          : USA
Author Comments  : good essay...lots of quotes
Teacher Comments : none
Date             : 3/18/96
Site found at    : told of it on irc
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            Robert Frost
    Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco.  His father
was William Frost, a Harvard graduate who was on his way westward
when he stopped to teach at Bucknell Academy in Pennsylvania for
extra money.  His mother, Isabelle Moodie began teaching math at
Bucknell while William was there, and they got married and moved to
San Francisco.  They  were constantly changing houses, and William
went from job to job as a journalist.  About a year after moving to San
Francisco, they had Robert.  They named him Robert Lee Frost, after
William's childhood hero, Robert E. Lee.
    Frost's father died from tuberculosis at age thirty-four, in 1885.
Isabelle took Robert and his sister back east to Massachusetts.  Soon
they moved to Salem, New Hampshire, where there was a teaching
opening.  Robert began to go to school and sit in on his mothers
classes.  He soon learned to love language, and eventually went to
Lawrence High School, where he wrote the words to the school hymn,
and graduated as co-valedictorian.  Frost read rabidly of Dickens,
Tennyson, Longfellow, and many others.  Frost was then sent to
Dartmouth college by his controlling grandfather, who saw it as the
proper place for him to train to become a businessman.  Frost read
even more in college, and learned that he loved poetry.
    His poetry had little success getting published, and he had to
work various jobs to make a living, such as a shoemaker, a country
schoolteacher, and a farmer.  In 1912 Frost gave up his teaching job,
sold his farm, and moved to England.  He received aid from poets suck
as Edward Thomas and Rupert Brooke, and published his first two
volumes of poetry, A Boy's Will in 1913, and North of Boston in 1914.
These works were well received not only in England, but in America.
Frost returned to America in 1915 and continued writing his poetry.
He produced many volumes of poetry, among which are Mountain
Interval (1916), West-Running Brook (1928), A Further Range (1936),
A Masque of Reason (1945), and In the Clearing (1962).  Frost
received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times (1924, 1931, 1937,
1943) and became the first poet to read a poem at the presidential
inauguration of John F. Kennedy.  His poetry was based mainly on life
and scenery in rural New England, and reflected many values of
American society.
    He died on January 29, 1963 in Boston, Massachusetts.  His
epitaph reads: "I had a lovers quarrel with the world."

    Frost once said, "I guess I must be just an ordinary man" (Cox 5)
and though he is, without a doubt, and extraordinary man, there is
some truth in the statement.  Throughout his poetry, Frost seems to
make many attempts to appeal to the common working American and
his feelings.  He does this through the subject matter and themes as
well as through the diction he uses.  "An ordinary man is one whose
imagination and character result from the constant impact of the
irresistible force of desire against the immovable object necessity, the
impact of feeling against reason, and the impact of faith against fact"
(Cox 17).  It is for this reason that Frosts work speaks to and for all
men.
    Many of the poems Frost wrote deal with situations set in a
simple, rural setting.  The characters he creates are very realistic, and
are not romanticized.  This is one reason why people can relate to the
poems.  His characters "seem more real than their neighbors with
manifest reservations" (Cox 8).  One could say that the people are
more three-dimensional than just imaginative words on a paper.  He
uses farmers and workers in his poetry, and sometimes he pokes fun at
the more "sophisticated" people and how they feel. Frosts world is one
that is related to a real world with its definite boundaries in time and
space (Gerber 90).
    Frost seems to have a good understanding of the world in which
his characters, ordinary people, live.  He understands the necessities of
the ordinary man, one who has to work hard to support himself and a
family, no matter what events may take place.  An example is the
poem "Out, Out-", in which a young boy has his hand accidentally cut
off by a chainsaw, and when he dies, the family, "since they were not
the one dead, turned to their affairs."  This theme reoccurs again in
other poem, where a tragic event occurs, but life goes on, and the
characters in the poem must ignore some of the pain in order to
continue to work and live.  Another theme he uses often is the pride of
the working man.  He understands that a working mans' value is
measured by the amount and the quality of the work that he does, and
an example of a poem where this is used is The Death of the Hired
Man.  In this poem, Silas, an old man, returns to a farm where he has
worked sporadically in the past, and wishes to work again.  The owner
of the farm and his wife both know this, but they respect the pride of
the old man, and do not want to damage that pride by refusing to let
him work to earn his keep.  Frost understands the pain and tragedy
that occurs in life, and is not a stranger to the experiences that make
men grieve and despair.  He has kept his sanity not by blinding
himself to the elements which make men mad, but rather the most
important result of his acquaintance with sorrow has been the
realization that the exercise of the creative faculties is independent of
the circumstance (Gerber 89).  Frost acknowledges this in the poem
Aquainted with the Night, when he talks about walking through a city
at night, and seeing all that goes on that those who only walk at night
cannot see.
    Frost also uses fairly simple words in his poetry, which makes it
easy for the reader to understand, while making it sound no less
elegant.  The diction relates directly to the subject of his poems,
because the farm workers and ordinary men do not think or speak with
complex words, but, like Frost, they use simple words to make a
complex statement.  One could say that Frosts words are like simple,
single-colored strands of thread, which he weaves together to make an
elegant, beautiful tapestry.


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