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Robert Frost, "Design"
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Re-Reading Questions
Text on p. 1057 of the full Ninth Edition
Pay particular attention to boldface words, considering their literal and emotional meaning as well as their underlying implications:
5
10 |
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I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth—
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.
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Re-Reading Questions
1. As you re-read the poem, pay special attention to the ironic juxtapositions of the metaphors and the repetitions of "white."
For your information, "heal-all" (also called "self-heal") is the common name for Prunella vulgaris (it's not hard to see why Frost didn't choose that name!), and the wild plant ordinarily has deep purple or blue blossoms. Like the spider, it is probably an albino mutation.
2. This is a tightly designed sonnet: there are three characters, three rhymes, and three questions. The underlying meter is iambic pentameter. Read the poem aloud, marking the accents in each line; note carefully variations in the meter (trochaic and spondaic feet). Consider how each change affects the sense of the poem. What are the implications of a poem about design being so carefully designed itself?
3. Surely the most important—and debatable—line in the poem is the final one, with its emphatic, conditional, or questioning "If." Is the speaker "appalled"? If so, by what? Or is this truly "a thing so small"? Would it be significant if design did not "govern" a "thing so small"? What are different ways this line could be read? How would each reading affect the poem's meaning?
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