He calls his life a “pathless wood,” which is essentially, a place in which he has lost joy in life and finds himself tangled in the web of the many burdens of adult life. The poet seems quite unhappy with his own life as he writes this. Even when nature forces you back down, the wood no longer seems as dark, because you then know that earth isn’t only a vast, endless wilderness that can’t be navigated. But, as a “swinger of birches,” going to the top gives you a view of what’s above, and a chance to nearly touch heaven. He says how life can become like a “pathless wood,” that sometimes in life you are walking, lost, through a forest, with no discernible exit in sight. Frost’s Use of Figurative Language in “Birches”įrost uses similes in a subtle, but effective way. He longs to return to swinging from birches once again.
That boy grows up to be a man, who is quite unhappy with the path, or lack thereof, of his adult life. Then, he moves on with the rest of his life. The boy does this to the point that it becomes an art and its own sport.Īfter a while, though, the boy conquers all of the trees. When he reaches the top, he swings down the branches to the bottom. Here is this boy, who climbs every tree he can. He is so far from anyone else to play with and is left to his own creative devices to amuse himself. “Birches” brings us the image of a little boy who loves to climb birch trees. When writing this poem, Frost seems to have been going through a midlife transition, weary of the considerations of daily life, wishing to go back to those simpler days, to an innocent, playful youth where such considerations don’t exist. He uses birch trees because of their pliability, their ability to bend, much like ourselves going through life itself. Robert Frost’s poem “Birches” tells us that he himself was once a swinger of birches, and that he wishes he could go back to being one. This analysis of a truly great poem deserves to be shared, especially as plenty of people today still want to know: what is the poem “Birches” about? What is the Theme of “Birches” by Robert Frost? After revisiting this academic piece years later, I decided to post it in a somewhat revised form on my website. Perhaps, my affection for the work has much to do with having to do an in-depth analysis of the poem for a senior English assignment. One of my all-time favorite poems is “Birches” by Robert Frost.
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