Commentary Robert Frost Design
“Design” by poet Robert Frost is a classic Italian sonnet composed of two stanzas: an octet and a sestet . It is written in a near perfect iambic pentameter with a simple rhyming scheme. The concept of mans isolation and search for meaning in the universe are often elements present in Frosts poetry. This idea is clearly implied in “Design”, part of his 1936 collection of poems A Further Range.
The first stanza depicts a natural but yet macabre scene as the spiders dominance over the moth is inevitable thus enabling the poet to convey a more general message and his doubts in the second stanza: is there a “design” in this world led by a higher power ?
First stanza (L. 1-8) :
L.1 : The choice of the spider is not a coincidence. Indeed the spider is a symbol of the fragility of our certainties and often represents in Greek myths the goddess creator of cosmos.
L.2 : We can see a repetition of the color “white” characterizing the heal-all, the spider and the moth. White usually connoting purity does not seem to have the same purpose in this poem. We would rather see it as a metaphor for the pallor of death as the spider is in fact holding a dead moth. Moreover, the heal-all is a type of flower which is not usually white. We can thus see an anomaly in the setting, maybe because everything is planned, designed we do not know yet.
L.3 : We can also observe a simile line 3 “like a white piece of rigid satin cloth” comparing the moth to a cloth. We can think that Frost is highlighting the lack of movement of the moth, as inactive as a cloth. We could then foreshadow that the moth is in fact already dead. Another way to see this simile is by thinking of the cloth as the spiders web. The moth is dead, captured in the spiders web. Frost is in fact depicting a natural scene here, only describing and underlining the setting and tone of his poem.
L.4 : Here, even though the color white is not mentioned directly, it stands for death and destruction as we had predicted at the first line. Indeed the spider and the moth are characterized as “assorted characters of death and blight”, assorted which we can assume by their color, white. Throughout the poem, it is the main symbolic element representing death and decay.
L.5 : At this line, the word “mixed” is striking as it reinforces the idea of the spider, the moth and the heal-all being “assorted” and thus put together as a group. We can suppose that they are put together because they have been created as a group, designed by the same power, referring to the title.
L.6 : We are confronted to a second simile here: “like the ingredients of a witches broth”. This line refers to the word “mixed” present line 5 as once again the idea of a group is depicted. Indeed