-- Robert Frost
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.
-- Robert Frost
When Frost called his poem "Design," he ensured that theology, philosophy, and that sort of serious stuff would be a part of any discussion of the poem. Robert Potter, for example, says that the poem is
a statement of what Frost took the nature of deity to be, an oppressive and vengeful deity, if not an evil one. . .a God who would reduce a human being to isolation and vulnerability. (Potter, 125)Randall Jarrell cites the poem as evidence that Frost was "a poet of darkness" (Jarrell); Lionel Trilling uses the poem to show that Frost was "a poet of tragedy and despair" (Trilling); and Reuben Brower tells us that the message of the poem is that "there is no order at all" in the universe (Brower, 104). Everett Carter disagrees with Potter and the others when he takes almost precisely the opposite point of view and claims that the principal tone of the poem is mockery
of those who would argue the dominance of the principle of evil in the Universe. . .and those who would tumble into the untenable position that the Universe is aimless and absurd. (Carter, 24)In plain English, the experts quoted above don't agree on what the poem means, but they do agree that understanding the poem means grasping Frost's religious and philosophical views.
While it is very true that the speaker in the poem discusses religious and philsophical issues, the poem is not a technical document in theology or philosophy. It is, first and foremost, a literary work. The views expressed by the speaker are not necessarily identical with Frost's personal views. What makes sense, therefore, is to the view the poem as a sort of mini-dramatic-monologue, that is, the speech of an imaginary character to a specific audience in a dramatic situation which reveals the inner workings of that speaker's personality (see dramatic monologue at "Meyer"). Understanding the poem need not require the reader to pass a course in the history of 20th Century philosophy and religion.
A sonnet is very little room to execute even a mini-dramatic-monologue, so any evidence of who the specific audience is will be compressed into a proportionately small space. However, the last six lines of the poem are phrased as rhetorical questions:
What had that flower to do with being white,Rhetorical questions seem to imply the presence of an audience whom those questions will direct toward appropriate unspoken answers. It seems there must be an audience who will recognize and formulate an unspoken answer: "Yes! Perhaps you're right; perhaps there is something appalling about the way the Universe is designed; but surely that "dark" design does not extend to such minor details as a couple of insects and an off-color flower."
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall? --
If design govern in a thing so small.
The essence of drama is conflict, and "Design" reads well as a psychological mini-drama, a conflict within the speaker -- a conflict between his common sense view that the tableau of spider, moth, and plant is merely an interesting but random visual design of white on white on white and his suspicion that the little scene implies a designer who deliberately "steer[s]" even the tiny details of our lives. The odds of finding a white heal-all plant instead of the normal blue variety are small and the odds of finding the white spider and the white moth all together with the white plant are very small indeed. To the speaker such a statistical unlikelihood is at least an arresting coincidence. These "assorted characters of death and blight / mixed ready to begin the morning right" startle the speaker into considering whether a "design of darkness" has been at work mixing up "a witches' brew" of disturbing images.
The tone of the poem has been called "jaunty," "ironic," and "flippant." The lightness of the tone implies that at least for the moment the psychological conflict is resolved in the direction of common sense. Thus critics such as those cited above seem wrong to read "tragedy and despair" in the poem. It does not sound like the speaker is swept into depression by seeing the little scene from Nature. Rather, the poem seems to be a tentative questioning or speculation about the mysteries of existence. It seems to be the passing observation of a mature, intelligent and witty observer who is interested in but not deeply disturbed by life's abiding puzzles. While he thinks it is possible that Nature may be responsible for the little scene and that Nature's plans may ultimately turn out to "appalling," he is not at all sure that "design govern[s] in a thing so small." What the character reveals about himself is that he is a not-very-intense Romantic who draws smallish and tentative moral lessons from Nature. Perhaps the poem is best viewed as a mini-dramatic-monologue revealing the character of a latter day mini-Wordsworth. Or perhaps we should refer to Keats' definition of "negative capability":
the capability of a man to be in uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts without any irritable reaching after facts or reason.In modern terms, Keat's was saying that the character of the true poet included the ability to stay calm in the presence of unsolved or unsolveable mysteries, to avoid the nagging urge to state a definite answer to a question which has no certain answer. May we not conclude that the character revealed in this mini-monologue is that of the "true poet," the "laid-back" modern man with negative capability?
It appears to me that at least the rudimentary elements of a dramatic monologue are present -- the speaker who reveals his character, the audience, and the psychological conflict that we expect of a dramatic situation. When we read a formal dramatic monologue like "My Last Duchess," we do not confuse the murderous and vain speaker in the poem with the author Robert Browning, and we shouldn't confuse Frost with the speaker in "Design." That speaker may be, and probably is, very much like Frost, perhaps even a projection of Frost as Frost liked to see himself, but he isn't Frost. He's a character invented by Frost. The scholars I have cited above are learned men, and they do important work. However, we don't need to master a 300-page study explaining Frost's religious and philosphical views in order to read the poem well; we can work out a reasonable reading of the poem without ever determining exactly what Frost believed about God, design, and the meaning of the Universe.
Sources Consulted:
Brower, Reuben A. The Poetry of Robert Frost. New York, 1963.
Carter, Everett. "Frost's 'Design,'" The Explicator, Fall88, Vol. 47 Issue 1, 23-26.
Jarrell, Randall. "To the Laodiceans," Kenyon Review 14 (1952), 535-561.
"Myer Literature: A Glossary of Literary Terms." Website at www.bedfordstmartins.com/
literature/bedlit/glossary_a.htm. Accessed November 2, 2004.
Potter, James L. Robert Frost Handbook. University Park, 1980.
Trilling, Lionel. "A Speech on Robert Frost: A Cultural Episode," Partisan Review 26 (Summer, 1959), 445-452.