The draft I forgot to post

On Design
Salman Ahmed
Robert Frost’s Design is often regarded as the poet’s affirmation of a classical view of God and intelligent design, cuing in on the innocent design of life and death in nature. From the use of pure, white imagery, Frost paints death in nature as innocent design of God. Further reading and analysis of the poem however reveals dark subtleties that allude to a certain idea of a dark, cynical design. The analysis of these subtleties leads to the idea that the poem is musing on the hopelessness of natural life and the lack of choice in destiny.
Design begins with describing a scene in nature. A fat, white dimpled spider is on a white heal-all, holding up its prey, a white moth. On first inspection, the repeated use of the color white seems to portray a sense of purity throughout the scene, from the spider to the flower to the moth. Within these three lines however there are several dark undertones that must be noted. The heal-all, a flower that is known to blossom blue, is white. A flower named heal-all is in a way abnormal—sick. It is not able to even heal itself, yet is called “heal-all”. This irony is extended in the fact that this scene of death occurs on a flower that is supposed to heal, not serve as an accessory of death. Another dark undertone is the depiction of the circle of life. Here, the spider must kill and end the life of the moth in order to continue living itself. A sense of hopelessness is portrayed by Frost in these opening lines.
Through the next five lines, Frost continues his use of negative undertones. The three characters mentioned in the first three lines are describes as being mixed like the “ingredients of a witches’ broth”. The spider is now an ingredient, the flower is now bubbly-froth, and the moth is described as “dead wings carried like a paper kite”. The description of the white moth as dead wings sounds almost like a fallen angel, and the use of “paper kite” makes the moth sound almost like a toy of the spider’s rather than just the sustenance needed to survive. Frost describes the event as being conjured by a witch. This argues the idea of an all-benevolent God, and rather the idea of an evil witch planning this act of nature. The innocent act of nature can now be read as an unnecessary, dark and evil event.
The next lines of the poem pose a series of questions designed to affirm the innocence of the characters in the scene. Since the characters are all innocent in the scene, the questions beg to reader to explore the idea that since the evil act was not a fault of the spider, flower, or moth, then the evil act was the fault of the design. A sense of hopelessness is reiterated in first four lines of the sestet. The flower had no choice in being white, and the moth is somehow driven to where the white spider so happened to prey. Frost is again questioning the idea of choice in life and the dark undertones suggest a bleak view of everyday life reflected in nature.
The structure of the last two lines leaves the couplet completely open to interpretation. The lines can be read in multiple ways. In one reading, Frost could be suggesting that if design is present in such small parts of nature, then darkness should not be questioned and should rather be accepted as it is in nature. Another reading is that we should not be shocked by darkness in life as it is apparent even in nature. A third, and more plausible reading given the negative undertones in the poem, is simply a sarcastic musing of Frost, that the darkness apparent in nature can also be reflected in things that are not so small.
Another aspect to play close attention to is the pattern of inversion throughout the poem. Instead of a black spider, Frost presents a white one. A white heal-all where a blue one is expected. The design of the poem is itself inverted as well. Though the poem is structured as a sonnet, Frost asks questions in the end of the poem and offers no solution, whereas in classical sonnets a problem is posed and solved in the conclusion of the sonnet. This absence of solution and the inversion of what the reader would normally expect plays into the theme of hopelessness.
Frost wrote and published this poem in 1936. It is critical to note that just two years prior to this—in 1934, Frost’s youngest child died after giving birth. Frost’s life was actually full of tragedy, and the reader cannot help but wonder if Frost’s personal life was indeed factored into his work. Taking this knowledge into account, Frost’s Design can be read as the cynical comm.;entary of life by Frost. The hopeless moth had no choice to live or die, yet it simply dies as a part of its life. These dark messages are repeated throughout the lines of the poem, and lend proof to the idea that Design is really a commentary on the evil present in the world by using evil present in nature.