Frost

Question 1

What

Answer 1

In Passage __, the speaker struggles against their own futility in a battle against an inescapable mortality.

Question 2

C1
Hymnal metricality / common metre.

Answer 2

• Belies speaker’s panic in the face of death.

Question 3

C1
‘The Frost of Death’ + ‘passive flower’

Answer 3

• conceit: death = frost, (life’s cold assassin) + human mortality = ‘passive flower’

Question 4

C1
‘secure your flower’

Answer 4

• Death = imperious tone + speaks imperatively

Question 5

C1
‘like soldiers fighting with a leak’

Answer 5

combined w. death’s mockingly imperious tone, simile shows speaker’s militaristic yet futile effort. death is inevitable.

Question 6

C1
‘we held to Sea - To Mountain - To the Sun -‘

Answer 6

• herculaean effort to save flower -> trans. belief in nature’s benevolence + renewal as speaker hopes to find in nature a safe + reviving haven.

Question 7

C1
‘Yet even on his scarlet shelf / To crawl the Frost begun -‘

Answer 7

• frost = unstoppable, even in face of sun (nature’s life giving force)
  -L7+8 enjamb to recreate ineluctable ‘crawl’ of frost.

Question 8

C1
‘we pried him back / ourselves we wedged / Himself and her between’

Answer 8

• Sp + collective ‘we’ of humanity ‘pried’ back death -> additional line giving concrete reality to speaker’s attempt to become physical barrier bw
• abandonment of characteristic dashes eliminates lancunae, through which death may penetrate

Question 9

‘yet easy as the narrow snake / he forked his way along’

Answer 9

phallic imagery redolent of Narrow Fellow, ED’s tendency to characterise nature’s hostility as masc.

Question 10

‘till all her beauty bent’

Answer 10

Death’s triumph over flower rep by allit. emphasises vulnerable exquisiteness / bent = verb’s plosive power evoking disfigurement + brutality.

Question 11

‘our wrath begun -/ We hunted him to his ravine / We chased him to his den’

Answer 11

sp. rejects naive trans. philosophy that suggests flower = emblem of death renewing itself in nature.
sp. + ED + all of humanity ‘hunted’ and ‘chased’ death x frost but gothic beast.

Question 12

‘we hated death and hated life’

Answer 12

• parallelism = shows sp. efforts in vain, as life + death = inextricably linked, bitterly lamented by sp.
  Hatred towards a God that curses his children to die.