Theme of loneliness in frosT’s poems:

Work of roberT frosT as The poeTry

of isolaTion
One of the most striking themes of Frost in some of his poems of negation is man’s
isolation in the universe or man’s sense of estrangement from his environment. In F rost’s
poetry there is a curious anti -social quality. He has a strong disinclination towards city life.
For instance, he has written no poems of friendship. He has written love -poems, but
misunderstanding is a constant theme in them. This misunderstanding is produced by some
deep and unbreakable barrier between soul and soul.

A circumstance in Frost’s personal life too contributed to the theme of isolation in

Frost’s poetry. For many years Frost’s sister, Jeanie, had been showing signs of mental
unbalance. By degrees she became totally isolated from the world. She was unable to
accept the coarseness and brutality of existence, in particular she found the facts of birth,
love and death revolting Jeanie’s ideal world could never be reconciled with the actual
world of daily life, nor would she accept the inevitable . Frost’s sadness in being unable to
dissuade his sister from this view of things is strikingly similar to the plight of the husband
in the poem ‘Home Burial’. The young woman in this poem cannot, lik e Jeanie, accept the
facts of her situation. She cannot reconcile herself to death of her child, with the result
that she becomes totally estranged from her husband.

Throughout the poems of ‘North of Boston’, Frost insistently projects the theme of
isolation, of man’s isolation from his fellow man. The old -style farmer in ‘Mending Wall’
not only refuses to pull down the useless barriers but insists on having the last word :
“Good fences make good neighbors”. In ‘The Black Cottage’ the world passes by the be st
in an earlier New England that took the phrases of the Declaration of Independence
seriously.

In ‘Acquainted With the Night’, the word ‘night’ may be interpreted in several ways.
But one convincing interpretation is that it symbolizes the basic isolati on of man from
other men and from Nature. Thus the poem becomes a dramatization of man’s loneliness.
The walker goes beyond the furthest city -light. The cry he hears is not meant for him and
he does not respond to it. Throughout the poem, there are people ---seen, heard, or known
to be there----but there is no direct contact with them. The poem is an expression of Frost’s

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own loneliness in a strange and obscure world. The writer here shows his realization and
understanding of his difficult situation.

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

This poem deserves comparison with ‘Desert Places’ which too has loneliness as its theme.
All animals have taken shelter in the ir dens. The poet is oppressed by a feeling of
loneliness.

And lonely as it is that loneliness

Will be more lonely ere it will be less.

‘The Old Man’s Winter Night’ shows an old man wandering alone in an empty house on a
winter night. The man finally goes to sleep beside the stove. The poem effectively captures
the loneliness and pathos of old age and presents a n opposition of life against death. ‘A
light he was to no one but himself’, Frost says about the old man here, and concludes the
poem with the following lines:

One aged man----one man-----can’t keep a house,

A farm, a countryside, or if he can,

It’s thus he does it of a winter night.

‘The Hill -Wife’ is a remarkable portrait of fear and loneliness. Having nothing to fill the
emptiness o f her isolation, the woman breaks under the gradual tension of a severe
environment. She was one who ought not to have been alone, but she was.

While to the ordinary reader, such poems seem to imply a pessimistic view of
human life, a critic interprets th em differently. These poems, he says, represent the
confrontations of fear, loneliness, not so much for purposes of shuddering as for purposes
of overcoming fright, first through individual, and then through social ingenuity, courage,
daring and action.

Another point in this connection is that Frost regards the sense of isolation, the feeling of
loneliness, not as peculiar American dilemma but as universal situation. The poems having
this theme are truly realistic and evoke a response from all readers of poetry.