Some readers may interpret the poems of Robert Frost's as being straight forward in expressing his personal belief, emotion, and attitude. However, his content of delivery goes much further in depth. Frost often applies ambiguity and paradox in stating the difficulty of something that has an absolute meaning, solution, or truth. He provides us with much evidence in analyzing complex questions from various perspectives which usually lead to a diversity of solutions. These evidences are quite apparent within the following poems: "For Once, Then something", "Fire and Ice", and "Design".
In the poem "Design," Frost describes a scene of nature through paradox and ambiguity. He utilized a spider, a moth and heal-alls as three different characters in depicting the scene. The starting point for the speaker's thought is what he perceives as a coincidence; a white spider sits on a white flower holding up a white moth. In Western culture, the color white typically associates with goodness, purity, and innocence. The language of the poem suggests that these connotative links - the spider is "dimpled" as well as "fat and white,"(Line 1) refers to a newborn baby. Therefore, a spider is being described as a symbolism of purity and innocence with features reminiscent of a newborn child. However, the spider eventually kills the moth. Now, if the spider represents righteousness and purity, then why would it kill a moth? The wings of the moth are portrayed as being "white pieces of rigid satin cloth" from a bridal dress. On the other hand, with narratives such as "like a white piece of rigid satin cloth" and "assorted characters of death and blight"(Line 3-4), the author makes a sudden transition from the extraction of beauty and innocence to tone of death and affliction. Although the name "heal-alls" suggests health, the wisdom and beneficence of a healer, and its ability to cure illness, this "heal-alls" has no power to restore life to a dead moth.
