Life's Worries: Realistic or Escapable.
There are many instances in life where one feels the need to escape from reality. In Robert Frost's poem, Birches, he exemplifies the way he feels about the troubles of life and how an easy way to overcome them would be through imagination. Everyone wants to leave the world sometimes, in order to rid themselves of the problems of everyday life. The speaker uses a variety of literary techniques to express his thoughts and ides in this poem. The poem can be interpreted by looking at two different concepts, childhood versus adulthood and reality versus imagination. The reality versus imagination seems to be the most predominant issue in this poem.
In the poem, by Frost, the speaker is literally describing the birches. The speaker in the poem is presently looking at the trees while thinking about his childhood. Although not much background about the speaker is given, the audience is aware to the fact that the speaker was once a swinger of birches. Throughout the poem the speaker describes the droopiness of the birches, possible causes for their appearance, the feelings that the speaker has for the birches, and the effects that the birches have had on the speaker. The tone of the poem is light- hearted with a sense of peacefulness. The flow of the poem itself gives the reader a feeling of swinging on branches. There is no specific rhyme scheme to the poem, Birches, which is considered as free verse. Robert Frost's use of diction in this poem is very specific and creative in order for the speaker to give the audience a vivid description of the trees and the cause for the birches present appearance. An example of such diction used to describe the birches is, " They click upon themselves as the breeze rises, and turn many-colored as the stir cracks and crazes their enamel" ( 7-9). An example of the personification present in this poem would be when the speaker discusses the trees reaching toward heaven and later setting the speaker back down again.