Essay --

Willie Breslau Professor Pollak COML 1109 11/27/13Reluctance by Robert cover An extended metaphor of a road, that represents the mans life and journey he has taken, runs throughout Robert Frosts poem Reluctance. The title and the last suck up patron to break through the metaphor and understand the meaning behind it, as Frost deliberates humans hesitation to accept change and the inevitability of a indwelling end, whether of a love or a season. Reluctance, along with several other Frost poems, focuses on the change of seasons and how the teller reacts to that change. However, while each narrator of Reluctance, Spring Pools, and Nothing Gold can hold up display different emotions about the seasonal changes they witness, they all display humans hesitation to turf out change and to hold onto what they have in the present. The sketch that I drew for this poem has a man who looks withered from travel with a long beard and wrinkled skin walking alone on a highway. Behind the narrator , I drew a small globe to represent that he is now re spell from his travels around the world and in front of him a small town labeled home. Around the man stands on the highway be trees that have lost most of their leaves and leaves that are being blown on the snow covered ground. Other plants are drawn with fleeting life, as winter seems to be coming if not already here. Reluctance consists of five stanzas each having six lines. The meter of the poem is tricky. In Frost terms, this poem could be considered to be in loose iambic trimeter, but would be more aptly described as trimeter. One interesting feature of this poems meter is that the last line of each stanza switches from trimeter to dimeter. Each stanza consists of the rhyme sc... ... In all three poems, change is represented as a transition between seasons with the narrator being enthralled by the present and not wanting time to change what they have. In Reluctance the seasons are more than actual seasons as the display a turning point in the narrators where he must decide to embrace change or follow his heart. In Spring Pools and Nothing Gold Can Stay the narrators both emphasize the short-lived beauty of nature because of the change in seasons and want so desperately the delay that change. However, both narrators almost reluctantly fare to the conclusion that change can bring more beauty but are worried to lose what they have in the present. Frosts command of poetry, nature, and human behavior are beautifully intertwined in these poems to create powerful messages that will continue to be relevant as mankind struggles to accept change.