assignment #1 for eng.3

Upon reading the poem “Design” by Robert Frost, I noticed that there were three things that can be used to explain what the poem is about. First I want to explain a few things about the poem. The Poem is an Italian sonnet, meaning it has fourteen lines, that is separated into two groups. The first eight lines are usually used to set up the scene or question; the six lines that come after give the Volta, a turn in events, or some philosophy.

In the poem “Design” the first part talks about a white spider, on a white Heal-all flower, and the spider is carrying a white moth. (I drew pictures of these things because I was bored. It was not necessary for the assignment.) So the poem is basically talking about God and his design of the world. How if god had designed this world he made it full of irony. This is clearly showing Frost’s doubt of God creating everything.

Although it is something that might be overlooked, and shrugged off as insignificant there is a reason that these three things are white. White is known to be the color of innocence, pure, and the force of god. The flower type is also important, the flower is a heal-all, so it’s some sort of medical plant. Why would these things be important? It’s because of what happened on the flower. The spider caught a moth on that flower and killed it. Something in the spider told it to go up on the flower and build a web, and something told the moth to fly towards that flower. Although it is what happens in nature it is ironic that both of those insects happen to be white, and that it happened on a white heal-all flower.

In the last lines of the poem, number 13 and 14, he says “what but design of darkness to appall?- If design govern in a thing so small.” First the poem’s title is design yet we see the word design two times in the poem and it these two lines. What he means is that it might have been a design of darkness that did this.