Shakespeare once said, "Everyone in the world is just a player, and all the world is a stage." (Shakespeare,1771) This statement obviously implies that life is just a series of amazing performances put on by people, but it also raises questions about whether the "players" are actually in charge of the performances they are making. (Shakespeare,1771). The "only" is dangerous: Does Shakespeare mean "only" to mean "just" or to mean "basically"? Is he advocating that the actors portraying life's dramas fall under the purview of a higher power or plan, making them basically manikins on the stage of life? Shakespeare does not, of course, represent the beginning and end of this crucial philosophical problem. Individuals of all times have handled this predicament, and among them is Robert Frost. Through his ballad, "Design," Frost examines the polarities of "light" and "dull," "great" and "terrible," and "life" and "demise." Frost introduces the subject of whether these ideas and the characters influenced by them are joined through outline or fortuitous event which accordingly makes the focal pressure of the poem. While practically every word and its position, each accentuation check and picture attempts to deliver this pressure, at last Frost offers no determination of the strain. Despite the fact that the title and numerous components in the sonnet recommend that Frost considers life to be an affair that is controlled and outlined by a remorseless being- much like the viewpoint Virginia Woolf offers in her exposition "Old Mrs. Dark, I at last trust that the ballad stays equivocal. Great or awful, plan or fluke, Frost assembles this ballad not to offer his perusers a simple answer about existence. Rather he sets up a multi-faceted contention about existence which his perusers need to determine, on the off chance that they can, for themselves.
The ballad starts sufficiently enough, from the initial three lines, Frost starts by telling his readers a tale that talks about finding a white bug sitting on a white blossom. There is a white moth in the bugs arms, which perusers discover later is dead. The thing that draws attention regarding this circumstance is that the 3 figures are all white in color. This is particularly strange when perusers consider the indication of "heal-all" (line two). A heal-all is "a typical herb of the Mint family (Brunela vulgaris), dejected of dynamic properties, however in days of yore thought to be a panacea" ("Heal-all").
In this poem the heal-all is not something normal-"What had that flower to do with being white/The wayside blue and guiltless mend all?" (lines nine-ten), this is what Frost exhibits as a worry. A white spider has been pulled in by a blue flower, the spider though has utilized the flower as cover. The bloom has likewise pulled in the consideration of a moth, who is by nature moved towards light and in this way will move to a white blossom - that emanates light even in diminish conditions- than a blue bloom (Frost,1967). Accordingly, the moth is destroyed by the spider. In the ending six lines of Frost's poem are a progression of inquiries he has about this circumstance. He needs to know whether the blossom, the bug, and moth have been joined in this hover of life and demise by invention or whether it was just a mere chance. Frost's underlying response to these inquiries is that design has helped unite these substances. "Design" intends to make or draw up, to arrange toward a particular reason. "Design" in the poem recommends that some other force has particularly made the white heal-all, the white moth, and the white spider and has united them for a specific reason.
Design is by all means Frost's underlying solution to his own particular inquiries not on the grounds that "Design" is the title of the poem, consequently being the early introduction perusers get when perusing the lyric, but because of the detailed plan of the ballad itself. "Design" is a strict Petrarchan poem. It has poetic pattern and an extremely constrained rhyme plot, abbaabbaacaacc, where there are just three unique rhymes. It is plainly partitioned into an octet and sestet in which Frost buids up the circumstance in the octet and ponders it in the sestet. There is symmetry in the octet also (Frost,1967). The octet can be isolated up in two distinctive ways. To start with, and most clear is the rhyme scheme; the initial four lines reflect the rhyme plan of the second four lines: abba and abba. Furthermore, the "characters" of the creepy spider, bloom, and moth are recorded in the initial two lines and in the final two lines of the octet. The greater part of this undeniable structure on Frost's part proposes that the solution to his inquiries must be "design." (Kendall,2012)
Frost's symbolism and style additionally bolster this answer. In "design," he utilizes the metaphor "Like the ingredients of a witches' broth" (line 6) and "mixed" to recommend that the spider, bloom, and moth are "various characters" that have been chosen and set up together for the reasons for another being. They have no say or control in their destiny, independent from anyone else yet should cling to a more prominent power's plan. Additionally, Frost makes use of the word"kindred" in line 11. The word applies to the moth, spider, and the flower not on the grounds that they all share the quality for being white. This indication prompts the audience to see the flower, moth, and spider as being made by a similar maker, a maker who, once more, particularly planned for them. "brought" in (line 11) and "steered" (line 12) upgrade this thought of configuration by suggesting that the moth and the spider did not meet up under their own energy. At the end of the day, some other force designing the circumstance has set them together. (Frost,1967) The readers would need to buy Frost's answer if he himself did not express an issue with "desgn." Within the mind-boggling proof of plan in the ballad are pictures and words with implications of wickedness. The picture of the flower, moth and spider as "ingredients of a witches' broth" is startling and devilish since witches are for the most part connected with the demon. This implies the "more prominent power" behind the designing is not a kindhearted resembling the Christian God, but rather a noxious being whose aim is to entice and devastate. He explains on this frightful thought using premonition style.
Frost wants the readers to scrutinize the issue that life and demise are fated in the wake of setting his perusers up for a simple, albeit loathsome answer all through the majority of the ballad. He additionally leaves the readers on a considerably less undermining note by using "small" (line 14). All of a sudden the readers are helped to remember the undertones of harmlessness, delicacy, and blamelessness encompassing the portrayals of the flower, moth, and the spider. In spite of the fact that life stays without significance-for if everything is possible, then there is no genuine importance or inspiration in it-the disintegration of evil in life makes that futility simpler to take (Kendall,2012).
At last, the reader doesn't get a clean answer about existence and passing from the writer. Truth be told, before the finish of the sonnet, the reader maybe feels somewhat like the flower, moth, and the spider all who could possibly be the toys of a greater power, for our own comprehension of the earth has been toyed with by the writer. The overwhelming structure, symbolism, and lingual authority of outline in the lyric dependably keeps running up against the "if," question marks, and intense positive relationship of "white." Which is Perhaps the main thing that Frost resolves, albeit possibly more for Frost than his readers, is that whatever life includes, great or underhandedness, plan or shot, it just genuinely holds meaning when contended about in nitty gritty philosophical talks or sonnets (Kendall,2012).
References:
Frost, R. (1967). Complete poems of Robert Frost. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Kendall, T. (2012). The art of Robert Frost. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press.
Shakespeare, W. (1771). The works of Shakespear: Bd. 8. Edinburgh: Donaldson.
