Birches

1. Birches By Robert Frost

3. What is it about? A man is walking through the woods, looking at the top of the tree line. He sees some trees swaying in the wind and he starts to imagine things about the trees. He thinks about how the ice covering the trees cracks when they bend. Then he thinks about how heavy ice and snow will bend thin trees to the ground. This gets him imagining a boy climbing to the top of trees and bending them down until he can let go and fall safely to the ground. He remembers doing this when he was a kid and wishes that when he felt trapped in his adult life he could climb trees. This memory makes him feel like life isn't a trap, because his youthful imagination can free him at any moment.

4. Why did Frost use ‘birches’? • After the last ice age, birch trees were one of the first types of plant life to repopulate the frozen ground. For this reason, the birch tree came to represent rebirth and renewal. It was also believed that the birch tree warded off evil spirits. Baby cradles and rattles were made from birch for protection. The Gauls would burn birch branches during marriage ceremonies for good luck.

5. Structure • Written in pentameter • Lacks rhyme scheme • Each line has 10-12 syllables • Simplicity of syntax and lexis • Lots of enjambment • 1st person narrator

6. This poem is written in blank verse with particular emphasis on the “sound of sense.” • Frost highlights the narrator’s regret that he can no longer find this peace of mind from swinging on birches. • There are no stanzas, as the tone is conversational, and you do not have conversations in stanza’s. • Significantly, the narrator’s desire to escape from the rational world is inconclusive – there is no clear end to the poem, it just finishes.

7. Line 1 When I see birches bend to left and right Line 3 I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

8. Line 9 As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel Lines 10, 11, 12 Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

9. Line 13 You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen Line 19 and 20 Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Before them over their heads to dry in the sun

10. Line 21 But I was going to say when Truth broke in Line 23, 24, 25, 26 I should prefer to have some boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch the cows- - Some boy too far from town to learn baseball Whose only play was what he found himself

11. Line 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 One by one he subdued his father’s trees By riding them down over and over again Until he took the stiffness out of them, And not one but hung limp, not one was left For him to conquer.

12. Line 37 & 38 With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim and even above the brim Line 44 And life is too much like a pathless wood

13. Symbolism linking to ‘the boy’ The boy: - The boy in the poem is imaginary. - Unlike the ice-storm that leaves it’s traces, the speaker only imagines the boy. - The speaker imagines the boy as a younger version of himself. - We learn that the boy represents a specific time in the speaker’s life that was filled with simple pleasures, adventures in nature and idle hours.

14. Symbolism linking to appearance and reality Appearance vs. Reality Poets like to manipulate what we assume to be facts – they often imagine how things could be different. It’s as if you’ve misunderstood something someone said and messed up because of it, or you’ve had a dream which was so realistic, you’re not sure if it actually happened.

15. Themes • Youth: Youth, like death, is a constant backdrop for many of Frost's poems. The speaker of "Birches" never sees a boy or comes across one. He only imagines one, and the boy that he does imagine is himself at a younger age. • Spirituality: Although Robert Frost is not the kind of poet to insert religious imagery into his poems in "Birches," Frost mentions "heaven" twice. Notice how it is always with a lower-case h and is more suggestive of the sky than paradise.

16. Isolation: As with much of Frost's poetry, "Birches" creates a mood of loneliness and isolation. Some factors that contribute to the mood include the winter weather, which seems to cut the speaker off from other people, and the speaker's discussion of the boy growing up on an isolated farm. The speaker's loneliness may be the result of adult concerns and considerations. • Man and the natural world: In this poem Frost plays around with many ideas of two traditions. The first is the Romantic tradition, poets like Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats often set their characters in Nature (notice the capital N). The character (often male) would embark on adventures or walks. He would have many interactions with nature e.g. Nature challenges him, he feels at one with Nature etc. The other tradition toned down the scary part of Nature and almost made Nature into a philosophy/religion.

17. Links to.. As the team’s head-brass Binsey Poplars • For obvious reasons, the both use trees to symbolise something in the narrators life. The symbolism contrasts – destruction/re-birth • They both have a sense of loss. ‘Birches’ shows the loss of the narrators childhood, which is presented more subtly than how ‘as the teams head brass’ expresses the narrator’s loss