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CONCLUSION
It is evident that the works of Robert Frost are unique and has hence drawn attention of a significant number of people due to their content.
To many he is a source of inspiration. Although the writings and poems have not been without critics, it is clear that they have attracted a significant readership and most of them adore his works as they draw comfort in the meaning they deduce from the work especially poetry. This is because Frost was able to incorporate almost every aspect that happens in our day to day lives more especially in the rural setting.
Robert Frost had it tough growing up and during his adulthood it did not get any easier. Frost wrote poetry relating to his rather challenging life experiences because he used it as a coping mechanism. Fear and anxiety were common images in his writing which is why his poetry explicitly depicts his true inner self. He vented out his anger through writing and this made his works appeal passionately to his readers. This influenced his writing and was a means of escape. He was not mentally ill as some people argue. Frost “knew himself”, that is why he was able to control his fears and balance the tension between the inner and outer self-forces.
The “knowing” and not “knowing himself” are statements of disagreement with the world. In Sheehy’s article, Lawrence Thompson notes that the ultimate problem of Frost biographer is to see if the biographer can be enough of a psychologist to get far enough back into the formative years of Robert Frost and to try to realize and clarify what forces were functioning, back there, to produce the curious forms of fixation which Robert Frost had to fight with of all through his life (Sheehy 393).
This challenge of having to delve into Frost’s background from a psychological perspective to explain whether or not he “knew himself” works to justify the view that he was not mentally ill.
Lisa Hinrichsen agreed with Thompson in accepting the idea of frost neurotic behavior. She includes a psychological analysis of Sigmund Freud in her article (Hinrichsen 42). Based on Freud’s psychoanalytic approach to fear and anxiety, the latter is used in Frost’s poetry in conjunction with conditions created in his poetry that reflect anxiety irrespective of any objective, while fear is fundamentally focused toward an object.
The Freudian theory helps us understand Frost more from a psychological standpoint. Hinrichsen develops her argument referring to Freud who gives anxiety to be associated with a “disruptive, uncontrollable character” and explains that it generates a feeling of “uncomfortable helplessness.” (Hinrichsen 48).
Hinrichsen claims that the anxiety of Frost’s poetry could be formed with the presence of conscious and unconscious fears. “Many of Frost’s poems are clearly self-consciously controlled spaced filled with boundaries, walls, doors, and frames that define spatial confines and carefully scaled scenes” (Hinrichsen 48). That Frost was more focused on expressing himself in relation to his experiences rather than making a blunt reference to remote life issues is clearly depicted in his works, as illustrated by Hinriechsen.
Frost constantly sets restrictions for himself in his poetry. Mental illness, which ran so commonly in this poet’s family, may become a serious reason for these fears. Enduring so much loss and suffering for years, Frost could be afraid to become mad himself and sets boundaries for his own emotions and imagination; though, this attempt to guard his inners self could be quite an insensible effort.
Frost’s plan was to put fear in his mind. His inner and outer forces are used here in the sense of “Tree at my Window.” In this poem, Frost illustrates two distinctive forms of self, which influence his being. He employs the imagery of the tree as the outer, and the speaker the inner.
While Hinrichsen and Eben Bass share the same ideas on inner and outer forces, Hinrichsen argues that the fear Frost has comes from anxiety within the poet. She expounds that the voice of fretfulness talks as a form of motion or flight in his poems. Bass focuses on fear, which comes from an outside object, just like the main image in Frost’s poems.
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