Inevitable Indecisions Anonymous 11th Grade

Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening explores the relationship between the reality of a critical situation and the fantastical version of this reality that becomes quite easy to get caught up in, and how this relationship can put somebody in a life or death situation. Both John T. Ogilvie and Reuben A. Brower explore this relationship in their writings about this poem. Ogilvie explains the critical decision of whether to go or to watch, and how the language suggests beauty, when the subject matter suggests life or death. Brower discusses the dream-like state of the poem and its detachment from reality, and he also brings small parts of other poems from Frost to give examples for his point. As far as the poem itself goes, the speaker doesn’t give us a gender, age, nor any characteristics about themselves except that they must be close to an adult to be riding alone at night on a horse, and that the speaker must be some sort of farmer because the horse always has a stable or farmhouse to sleep in. They are interested in the world around them and how beautiful it can be. The speaker feels compelled to say something because they have pretty much a life or death situation in front of them, and even though it seems...