Situation/ Setting

Setting/Situation:

“Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
“Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening” seems to be an obvious choice for a poem that encompasses the element of setting/situation, but it does so so perfectly. One has to read no further than the title of Robert Frost's poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” to get a clear depiction of what the setting will be. That being said, the setting goes farther than just being woods on a snowy evening. The setting of this particular poem is what makes the entire story. If the setting was changed in any way, the poem would be completely different. As it is, the speaker is traveling, the reader can only assume he is on his way home, his only company his horse. Setting and situation go hand in hand, especially in this poem. Frost manages to connect the two so that they almost cannot exist without the other. While on his travels, the speaker has decided to stop and examine his surroundings. Such surroundings evoke thoughts of the speakers life beyond the moment that is spoken of. One wonders why the speaker is in the middle of the woods on “the darkest evening of the year”. While the woods and the darkness as well as the isolation of his location should frighten him, the speaker feels a calmness that is nowhere else. Being away from society, yet close enough to it as is suggested by the land whose owner “is in the village though”, allows the speaker to be seen as trying to be further from society yet is pulled towards its influence. By adding a horse as his companion, an animal that is domesticated and lives harmoniously with humans, the speaker has a direct link to society. The blanket of snow suggests issues that go deeper than what is on the surface of the poem. They may, perhaps, be issues that the speaker wishes to conceal, to cover as snow covers the surface of the dark, deep woods with a white lightness of purity. The speaker sees the woods as “lovely” even though they are “dark and deep”. Such imagery suggests a pull towards the darker side of being, perhaps death, an element that may be the only way of escaping and covering the problems that society would be better off without. However, the repetition of the last two lines: “And miles to go before I sleep”suggest that the reader, although contemplating death as shown through “sleep”, must return home to face the world; that there are years to come before he will allow himself to die.

“Fairy-Land” by Edgar Allan Poe

Dim vales--and shadowy floods--
And cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can't discover
For the tears that drip all over
Huge moons there wax and wane--
Again--again--again--
Every moment of the night--
Forever changing places--
And they put out the star-light
With the breath from their pale faces.
About twelve by the moon-dial
One more filmy than the rest
(A kind which, upon trial,
They have found to be the best)
Comes down--still down--and down
With its centre on the crown
Of a mountain's eminence,
While its wide circumference
In easy drapery falls
Over hamlets, over halls,
Wherever they may be--
O'er the strange woods--o'er the sea--
Over spirits on the wing--
Over every drowsy thing--
And buries them up quite
In a labyrinth of light--
And then, how deep!--O, deep!
Is the passion of their sleep.
In the morning they arise,
And their moony covering
Is soaring in the skies,
With the tempests as they toss,
Like--almost any thing--
Or a yellow Albatross.
They use that moon no more
For the same end as before--
Videlicet a tent--
Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,
Into a shower dissever,
Of which those butterflies,
Of Earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again
(Never-contented thing!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.
Some poems use the setting as a secondary element. In Edgar Allen Poe's "Fairy-Land", the setting of the poem is the primary focus. Poe uses rich language and imagery to allow the readers to really see the setting of the story he is telling in this poem. The title of the poem, "Fairy-Land", allows the reader to know, right from the beginning that the poem is not going to be about something realistic, but instead will revolve around a fantasy. The setting depicted throughout the poem further creates a world of fantasy for the reader to escape to. The poem repeatedly mentions the moon, suggesting the cycles of nature. The use of the moon also depicts that the poem takes place at night, which re-enforces the feeling that the speaker is in some dream world. Other natural elements include the mountains, woods, sea, and “butterflies/ of Earth”. However, Poe also adds a “hall” suggesting that the natural world and the fantasy world that the speaker is dreaming of are closely related and can ultimately intermingle.