While snow may represent a peaceful, calm evening, the night is described as the darkest of the year. "Between the woods and frozen lake/ The darkest evening of the year." (807). The pure black against the pure white, with the woods in the middle. Frost then makes mention of a frozen lake. .
It is clear that Frost is using the woods, the snow, the night, and the lake, to represent death, and the afterlife. Lakes are common images of life. Water is often used a source of life, as a reviver of things. However, this lake is frozen, there is no life in the lake now. Its ice, not water. The darkness of the night is death. The pure white of the snow is life. Frost must continue through the snow, into the night. He must continue through life, into death. Frost remarks: "I have promises to keep, but miles to go before I sleep." The man doesn't want to die yet. He has duties to fulfill in life, and plans on traveling through life longer than this point. So he presses on, and ignores the woods, the afterlife. I feel the reason the woods haven't been described is because the man couldn't describe them. He doesn't know what his afterlife will be, heaven or hell, only that it will exist. Although he is curious, and would like to know, like when he says: "The woods are lovely, dark, and deep." He mentions how they look inviting, a place he"d like to go. This poem is all about mans eternal struggle between Life, Death, and the consequences of our actions in between, which decide what comes after.
In his poem, the Road Not Taken, Frost once again uses first person to tell the story. He begins by setting his scene as a wooded area, with a fork in the road. He wishes he could travel both, but knows that there is no turning back from which one he chooses, he has to commit. He talks about he is but one lone traveler in the forest, and is looking long and hard down the roads. The first one he sees, bends around the growth of the forest, he can only see so far down it.
