Robert Frost Takes Our Imaginations To A Journey Through Wintertime Wi

Robert Frost takes our imaginations to a journey through wintertime with his two poems Desert Places and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Frost comes from a New England background and these two poems reflect the beautiful scenery that is present in that part of the country. Even though these poems both have winter settings they contain very different tones. One has a feeling of depressing loneliness and the other a feeling of welcome solitude. They show how the same setting can have totally different impacts on a person depending on their mindset at the time. These poems are both made up of simple stanzas and diction but they are not simple poems. In the poem Desert Places the speaker is a man who is traveling through the countryside on a beautiful winter evening. He is completely surrounded with feelings of loneliness. The speaker views a snow covered field as a deserted place. A blanker whiteness of benighted snow/ With no expression, nothing to express. Whiteness and blanknes s are two key ideas in this poem. The white symbolizes open and empty spaces. The snow is a white blanket that covers up everything living. The blankness symbolizes the emptiness that the speaker feels. To him there is nothing else around except for the unfeeling snow and his lonely thoughts. The speaker in this poem is jealous of the woods. The woods around it have it - it is theirs. The woods symbolizes people and society. They have something that belongs to them, something to feel a part of. The woods has its place in nature and it is also a part of a bigger picture. The speaker is so alone inside that he feels that he is not a part of anything. Nature has a way of bringing all of her parts together to act as one. Even the animals are a part of this wintery scene. All animals are smothered in their lairs,/ I am too absent-spirited to count. The snow throws its blanket of whiteness over everything and to him it is a feeling of numbness. The loneliness includes me unawares. The spe aker has lost his enthusiasm for life. He can not express his feelings easily because of this feeling of numbness. The speaker is also in denial about feeling alone. He is at a stage where he just does not care about too much and he is feeling a bit paranoid. They cannot scare me with their empty space. He is saying who cares how I feel, I do not need anyone else. I have in me so much nearer home/ To scare myself with my own desert places. The speaker was starting to realize that he had shut himself off to the world. He recognized that this winter place was like his life. He had let depression and loneliness creep into his life and totally take over like the snow had crept up on the plain and silently covered it. If he continues to let these feelings run his life, eventually everything would be snuffed out much like the snow does to nature. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is a much happier and more upbeat poem than Desert Places. This poem is about stopping to enjoy life or as the cliche goes, stopping to smell the roses. But I have promises to keep,/ and miles to go before I sleep. The speaker in this poem was a very busy man who always had obligations to fulfill and places to go. A feeling of regret is present. The man would like to stay and enjoy this private nature scene longer but he knows that he has other things to do. Again, Frost gives us a beautiful nature scene but this time we enjoy welcome solitude. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. This poem expresses the joy of nature. The speaker seems concerned about what the rest of society would think about him just stopping in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason. His horse represents society. My little horse must think it queer/ To stop without a farmhouse near. He admits that just stopping does seem odd. He is also somewhat concerned about the man

French and Spanish Influance essays

French and Spanish Influance essays The French and Spanish responded differently to the culture and economy of the Native Americans. Even though both countries traveled to the New World for riches, their ways of obtaining the riches could not have been more different. The Spanish decided to conquer and enslave the Indians. The French traded peacefully with the Indians and changed both the Indian culture and their own culture to gain confidence with the Indians. The type of Spaniard, which arrived on the New World before 1750, was either a monk or a conquistador. The job of the conquistadors was to capture Indian cities and then loot them of all their riches. After the capturing and looting of cities, the conquistadors would usually enslave all the surviving Indian people to earn money for the conquistador. The Spanish government did not mind this because they got one fifth of all the profits of these settlements known as The Royal Fifth. Because of the lack of Spanish women, the conquistadors intermarried with the Indians creating a new race called Mestizos. In Spain, being a Mestizo or having Native American blood in your veins was looked down upon. The social hierarchy consisted of pure blood Spanish being at the top and pure Native Americans being at the bottom. This created a natural block against any people with Native American blood holding a high position in Spain, which was probably one of the main reasons Indian slavery was never put into question by the Spaniards. The monks of Spain were no better then the conquistadors. The monks only goal was to convert the Native Americans to Catholicism. These servants of God destroyed the Indian temples and built churches where they once lay. No part of Indian culture was allowed to be retained by the Native Americans. The effect of this was the Indians did not accept Catholicism but they also lost ties to their own culture. The French had a more peaceful approach to the Indians. The f...