Design by Robert Frost: Summary

Design by Robert Frost: Summary

One of the most difficult poems, Design, an Italian sonnet by Robert Frost was published in 'A Further Range' in 1936. The sonnet is the expression of the poet's surprise over the mysterious existence of the world surrounded by omens and evil designs. According to a critic, ‘this is a poem of finding evil in innocence, a song of experience, though the voice is hardly that of Blake's childlike singer.'

The poet has drawn the picture of a fat and white dimpled spider which had caught hold of a moth like the white piece of the cloth on a flower called white heal-all. This simile has been used to indicate the white color of the moth. All these three things – spider, heal-all flower, and the moth are shown to be white. All these three white creatures and flowers are brought together for some terrible reason. The terrible reason is a dark design of death or we can say the food chain in a positive term.

By bringing all these white things together, the speaker is trying to highlight the food chain lying in nature. The moth has gone there in search of the juice of heal-all flower and the spider has gone there in search of the moth. One day, even the spider will become the food for the flower. All these things of the universe are interconnected. Nature has designed us to be interdependent. Even living things and surviving upon each other. Nature has already designed this interconnection.

The "heal-all" is a common country plant supposed to have healing properties: it is almost always blue in color. The poet has found a strange white variety and stranger still, attained to it a white spinner, "a snow-drop spider", holding a white moth, completing a pattern of whiteness. Here, in the world of chaos and darkness, there is purpose and design, "if (the poet speculates whimsically) design governs in a thing so small."

The white color is generally a symbol of purity and innocence, but in this poem, this color has been contrasted with its meaning. The white color of the wicked flower heal-all (an ironic name) and the white natural born killer spider bring forth the image of an actual horror scene and the innocence of the white color does not matter here. So, in this respect, the white color in this poem has been used as a symbol of decay, death, and destruction. It is the design of the god to bring them together and it is also the dark design of nature to turn blue color heal-all flower into white, black color spider into white and the moth into white. These three characters of death and disease are at the same place like the ingredients of witch’s broth. This image does not bring the idea of life enhancing, but the image of destruction, cruelty, and dependency. By showing everything white so cruel and horrific, Frost infers that darkness is everywhere, even under the hide of so called innocent people. Humanity is vulnerable as the moth in the poem. 

Syllabus

A Dilemma

A Dilemma: A Layman Looks at Science

Raymond Blaine Fosdick (1883-1972), lawyer, public servant, and author, was born in Buffalo, New York, the son of a high school principal. He was a lifetime disciple of Woodrow Wilson. Raymond B. Fosdick  in the lesson  ‘A Dilemma: A Layman Looks at Science’  says  that  science  should  be used only for the constructive purpose and not to be  aimed  at  the degeneration of the society. August  6,  1945,  a  day  of  unfortunate,  on  which  the atomic bomb  was  dropped  on Hiroshima  brought  home  to all of us about the significance (or) importance of science in  human  life.  Mankind  was frightened by science and bewildered  by  its  enormous  power.  This  instance  has realised the mankind how unequipped we are in terms of ethics, law, and government, to know how to use it. The author says that science  is based  on  truth and should spring from the noblest attribute of the human spirit.

There are certain inventions that can evoke both positive and negative responses. Invention of radio, automobiles, penicillin, radar and jet propulsions shall be aimed towards the betterment of the society rather  than  creating  ugliness and desolation. The gifts of science,  the  author  vehemently  feels, should not blow our civilization into  drifting  dust. The  research  and Technology  yield  right  fruits  when  they  are  related  to  human welfare.

Science is the search for truth. But it is the same search for truth that has brought our civilization to the brink of  destruction.  The  writer  strongly  feels that research shall be subjected to some kind of restraint if it is not linked  to human constructive purpose; it is really  disheartening  to  read  about  that  leading scientists associated with atom bomb saying that one should  not hold  back progress because of fear of misuse of   science.

Fosdick says that some inventions are purely accidental and the scientists never had any evil intentions while discovering them. For instance Albert Einestein never thought of atom bomb while working for his transformation equation in 1905. Yet, from this it has come out one of the principles  upon which atom bomb is based. Similarly sulphur drugs and mustard gas which are offshoots of German dye industry  was  not  created  to  deal  with  either  medicine or weapons of  war.  Willard  Gibbs, was  a  gentle  spirit  whose  life  was spent in his laboratory at Yale University, had never dreamt that his research  in the mathematical physics might have even a remote  relationship  to  World War I & II. These discoveries are classic examples  where  the gifts  of science  can  be used by evil men to do evil even more  obviously  and dramatically than it can be used by men of goodwill to do good.

The author concludes that the towering enemy of mankind is not science but  war.  Science merely reflect the social  forces  by  which  it is surrounded. When there is peace, science is constructive and when there is war, science is perverted to destructive ends.  Our  problem  therefore  is  not  to  curb  science but to stop war- to substitute law for force and international government for anarchy in the relations of  one  nation  with  another.  He  feels  that  our  education should be  based  on  tolerance  understanding  and  creative intelligence that should run fast enough to put an end to the evil effects of the science. Formally, Science must help us but the decision lies within ourselves ie., the sole responsibility  is of human beings.