Robert Frost and Ted Hughes: Journeys in “Out, Out,” “Daffodils,” and “Red”

By embracing the idea of a journey, we regularly reach our location with a greater understanding of ourselves and current surroundings. Following scrutinizing the concept of journeys it has turn out to be self evident that our lives can be fairly capricious so it is essential to value the insignificant factors in life that we frequently take for granted. In ‘Birthday Letters’ Ted Hughes illustrates how unpredictable, erratic and fluctuating a journey can be. Robert Frost supports this perception and expresses the insignificance of life in his poem ‘Out, Out’. Each texts have demonstrated to me how unpredictable and unforeseen journeys can be. Appreciating and getting grateful for the small issues in life will be auspicious for us. This is expressed in Ted Hughes’ poems ‘Daffodils’ and ‘Red’ exactly where he symbolically describes the emotional journey that was his marriage with Plath.

The inclusive language at the starting of the Hughes 1st poem ‘Remember how we picked the daffodils?’ shows how Hughes affectionately recalls memories from the loving starting of their marriage and reinforces the connection they as soon as shared. Even so, the language in the text abruptly shifts in tone, ‘She can not even bear in mind you’. This abusive language, coupled with the modify to second particular person, properly contrasts to the beginning of the poem and represents troubles that they had with Plath’s mental illness and eventually the downfall of their marriage. In the poem Hughes refers to the daffodils as if they are struggling and suffering, this is a motif for their partnership. He personifies the daffodils to produce a feeling of unease and instability ‘among the soft shrieks-/ Of their girlish dance-frocks-/Fresh opened dragonflies,’. From this the audience can recognise that Hughes is uncertain and concerned about the connection between himself and Plath. This culminates in his realisation that his marriage, like the flowers,‘Opened too early’ which expresses his regret that they lost the passion and warmth that was after felt in their partnership.

Hughes shows how the journey can usually be unpredictable and fluctuating so it is essential to appreciate the joyful moments when they arise to steer clear of feeling the anguish Hughes did. The tragic ending of their relationship and Plath’s debilitating mental illness is conveyed additional in the final poem of ‘Birthday Letters’, “Red”. Hughes uses powerful descriptive language to metaphorically encase Plath in the colour red, ‘But red/ Was what you wrapped about you’. Hughes makes use of this symbolism of the colour to represent her self induced suffering and to show his animosity towards Plath. In the final message of the poem we are introduced to a new colour as Hughes uses a metaphor to represent Plath’s motherhood and graciousness with blue. “But the jewel you lost was blue”, despite the fact that Hughes displays Plath’s qualities that appealed to him, his bitterness is nonetheless evident and the audience is as soon as once again presented with his disappointment that Plath could not overcome her illness even with the aid of motherhood, that she let go of her jewel and consequently lost herself. Hughes illustrates his mistakes of taking the happiness of his marriage for granted and supplies us with the lesson of appreciating the tiny issues in life. Therefore, the poem reinforces to the audience that journeys are always continuing, as we often have a hunger to relive previous experiences that we continuously yearn. In the end, Hughes shows that journeys allow us to not only understand events in our life, but also acquire intuition towards our beliefs.

Right after examining the notion of journeys, a reader can be compelled to contemplate the fragility and brevity of life. Robert Frost strongly expresses just how abrupt and insignificant our lives can be in his poem ‘Out, Out’. The title of the poem is an allusion to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, when Macbeth hears the news of Lady Macbeth’s death he reveals “Out, out, short candle!/ Life’s but a walking shadow, … Signifying nothing.” The dying of the candle shows how just our lives can be diminished and abandoned. This reference also reinforces how infiniTesimal our lives are in the great scheme of factors. This is illustrated once again at the finish of the poem, by the general detached tone when the bystanders, who are not affected by the boy’s death “turned to their affairs”. This act of the bystanders who practically look to forget about the boy’s death proves the irrelevance and pointlessness of our existence. In the poem Frost creates a harmonious and tranquil setting “Five mountain ranges one behind the other/ Beneath the sunset far into Vermont.” Even so this peaceful image is interrupted when he personifies the buzz saw which “snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled.” The use of onomatopoeic verbs thoroughly enhances the intrusion of the saw into the all-natural background.

Frost demonstrates how some thing so serene can expeditiously be overturned which eventually final results in the boy’s loss of life. This recognition of how subtle and minuscule our existence can be creates the moral of our lives being precious. With the use of evocative imagery and a metaphor, “Holding up the hand,/ … as if to hold/ The life from spilling.” Frost expresses the boys horrific realization and recent understanding of how fragile his life is. The metaphor illustrates the boy’s disbelief as he is convinced such a easy act can preserve his existence. This emphasizes how swiftly anything so innocent can be corrupted and it is since of this ease that our lives are so valuable to us. Frost underlines the need to have to seize the day and make the most of the present. Additionally it is demonstrated how ferocious a journey may possibly be and how it is often impossible to predict what a journey may possibly have in retailer for the traveller. Therefore it is vital to value our lives as they are frequently much more vulnerable and fragile than we count on.

It is not possible to predict what a journey will have in store for us. They can drive us to appreciate the existing happenings in life. In Hughes’ poems ‘Red’ and ‘Daffodils’ and Frost’s ‘Out, Out’ I was obliged to take into account the value of not taking every little thing for granted, as the authors of these texts clarified the perception of how fragile and brief life is. Analysing journeys has permitted me to acknowledge how enlightening they can be in gaining a fuller understanding of the complexities of life. It has not too long ago grow to be apparent how journeys can challenge, inspire and reevaluate our underlying assumptions about the world.