Symbol Analysis
This poem has country images all over the place. Frost is the king of rural New England imagery, and it serves not just to create a setting, but a mood. We have pastoral, semi-industrial, and homely all condensed. This particular poem's agenda is to interrogate certain aspects of that lifestyle, especially those associated with production.
- Line 2: Nothing like "stove-length sticks of wood" to power your home stove. But seriously, this is a classic country image. Harvesting wood for heat means that it must be split, dried, and stored. The poem opens on this task.
- Line 6: Sunsets are a classic country image (no smog, no pigeons). This one is particularly country-esque because it actually locates us. Because the sun sets in the west in Vermont (as Frost tells us), we know what state we're in.
- Line 12: The image of a boy "saved from work" goes from My Antonia to Charlotte's Web. In rural fictional homes, children begin to do adults' work sooner because there is more work to be done, and because it gets the action going. This is classic stuff, people.
- Line 14: The woman calling to her family for supper is an image to be found all over rural literature. This particular poem doesn't have much to say about female roles on a farm other than invoking this basic image.
- Line 26: Anne of Green Gables? Dr. Quinn? Rural doctors abound (but must be summoned), and this poem is no exception.