Birches by Robert Frost Flashcards
What are the three sections of birches?
- Speaker focuses on the distinctive quality of the birches
- Poet imagines a boy at play, swinging the birches
- Poet reminisces on his own boyhood, and meditates on life
What are the themes of Birches?
Youth
Nature
Isolation
Wish to escape
QUOTE: The poet longs for the freedoms of the boy he once was
“So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be”
In Birches, the birch trees act as…
a link between earth and heaven
“I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again”
What conclusion does Frost come to in the final two lines of Birches ? (QUOTE)
We get a sense that Frost has come to a wise conclusion, with quiet perceptiveness
“That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches”
QUOTE: The boy in birches is isolated and solitary, yet resourceful
“Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone”
QUOTE: Frost would like to escape his earthly troubles (Birches)
“I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.”
What is the tone of Birches?
○ Quite welcoming and gentle
○ Reader is addressed directly
► “Often you must have seen them”
○ Philosophical and reflective
► “May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”
QUOTE: Give examples of cacophony in birches, and describe the effect it has
○ “…They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel”
○ The clicking, cracking and crazing sounds are very effective and accurate here
○ It creates an onomatopoeic description of the ice-coated trees moving very gradually in the breeze
What evidence of repetition do we see in Birches? What effect does this have?
The repetition of ‘so’ in “So was I once myself a swinger of birches./ And so I dream of going back to be”, and also the use of once, dream and going back suggest a wistful, nostalgic mood
What is the purpose of the italicised ‘Toward’ in Birches?
It emphasises the poet’s awareness of the trees being somewhere between earth and heaven
Give the opening three lines of Birches (as an general example of the image of the boy and of his presence in the birches)
“I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them”
Give an example of a simile in Birches. Explain
“Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.”
Nature has distorted these trees, and even though the birches have been affected by winters, Frost conveys a sense of how these trees are still youthful, fluid and feminine
The image turns nature human
QUOTE the image that Frost uses to convey his understanding of adult life, with its difficulties and uncertainties
“It’s when I’m weary of consideration,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open”
