Robert Frost’s “The Woodpile”

For many readers of Robert Frost’s “The Woodpile”, it may be tempt­ing to disregard it as being no more than some strange story about a de­serted pile of wood. It is certainly more than that. I found myself thinking that perhaps the wood was left there for the lost traveler to find, (indeed he was lost, because he wasn’t sure exactly which way to go, as illustrated by the opening lines of the poem, wherein Frost writes, “‘I will turn back from here. No, I will go on farther-and we shall see. ‘”) but there is no evidence in the text to really support this theory of intent.

I have thus come to the conclu­sion that the wood symbolizes man’s efforts to control nature, and, more importantly, that it represents how man’s efforts to harness and/or control nature are temporary. In addition to this idea of the fleetingness of man’s efforts, appears the sub-theme of being lost; this only serves to lend fur­ther support to the more general theme of “man versus nature”. Just in case anybody reading this has any doubts, I will be attempting to prove my point about this by citing several lines of text which appear to support this thesis.

In the first line of the poem, it appears that the narrator knows where he is, or at least that he’s been there before, “in the frozen swamp”. However, as the poem unfolds it becomes more apparent that he is in fact lost, or perhaps not sure of himself or which way he should go. He knows he is walking through the frozen swamp, but the fact that he questions himself indicates that he is lost. This is the first representation of man’s helpless­ness against nature, and also an important use of irony; he seems at first to be confident of his surroundings, the frozen swamp, but it is revealed to us that he is not sure which way to go.

In line four, we also see possible conno­tations that nature has the power to either support man, or to trip him up; “the hard snow held me, save where now and then one foot went through. ” The un­derlying theme of being lost continues to develop in lines five through nine, wherein the narrative describes a view of lines of tall slim trees, “too much alike to mark or name a place by so as to say for certain I was here, or somewhere else: I was just far from home. ” The introduction of the small bird further contributes to the meaning of the poem.

In an effort perhaps to understand the bird, the narrator at­tributes human thoughts and emotions to the bird’s behavior. The bird’s motives are not explained, but remain ambiguous, as the narrator can’t really know what they are. After a few more close readings of the third stanza, I decided that there is textual evidence to support that the bird quite possi­bly is more confident than the man in their surroundings, and that the man appears to be trying to forget he is lost by applying these human attributes to the bird, thus making it seem to himself that the bird is in less control than he is.

This is almost sarcastically noted in line thirteen which states, “who was so foolish as to think what he thought. ” Since he can’t really know what the bird may be thinking, there is another use of irony here. The nar­rator is really the foolish one because he is the one who is lost, and he thinks the bird is the one who is unsure of himself, and even fearful of him. In line number eleven, the author chooses the word, “lighted”. I con­sidered this word for quite some time.

At first reading, it seems to mean that the bird is simply flying from perch to perch, in an effort to avoid close contact with the man; however, “lighted” could possibly mean that the bird is also a source of light, or that he is guiding the lost man through the frozen swamp in some way. Additionally, the word “undeceived” appears in line sev­enteen. This may serve to suggest that the man was trying to deceive the bird; why else did Frost choose to use this word? Perhaps the man wasn’t directly trying to deceive the bird, but this may lend extra proof of man’s attempts to control nature.

If this is so, then the bird need only take “one flight out sideways” in order to thwart this attempt. Further evidence exists to support the idea of the bird leading the man, because in line ten he flew before him, and in line twenty-two, the bird makes “his last stand” right be­hind the wood pile, which is where the man is still standing by the end of the piece. We don’t get to see what happens after the man has observed the wood-pile, but we do know that both he and the bird stopped at the same site.

This leads me to yet another conclusion that the bird is a symbol of nature; he leads the man to the scene of what was presumably another hu­man being’s attempt to control nature, i. e. the chopping and arranging of firewood. Because the wood was never used, the bird may be demonstrating to him blatantly how futile man’s attempts are to overcome nature. The bird can be seen as an instrument of nature in this way, a symbol. I even found support for the idea that the bird might actually be the source of salvation for the man. Because the bird leads him to the firewood, the man might choose to start a fire to warm himself in the frozen swamp.

We can never be sure if he decided to do this, but this could be an indication of nature choosing to save the man. Either way, this places nature in the position of control. He arrives at the wood-pile in line number eighteen. Following this line are several ironies, all of which point to the central theme of the poem. A major paradox reveals itself in this section too. The paradox is, of course, that there is an orderly pile of exactly measured, cut and split fire­wood which is just sitting in the middle of the frozen swamp.

The man ob­serves numerous clues as to the age of the wood, and the strange fact that it was abandoned in the middle of the frozen swamp:”No runner tracks in this year’s snow looped near it. “, “The wood was gray and the bark warping off it and the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis had wound strings round and round it like a bundle. ” These observations show clearly how long ago the wood was chopped and piled so neatly, by whomever it was that did so. The irony is evident in these lines, because one can’t help but posit why somebody would go to such trou­ble, just to leave it there.

Perhaps the wood-pile wasn’t ignored intention­ally, perhaps the man who cut the wood died. This is just conjecture on my part though, and it cannot be assumed to be the case since the text doesn’t reveal this to us. But what is revealed to us is the persistence of nature, as opposed to the temporariness of man’s labors. This theme is reinforced in line numbers thirty-two through thirty-four, where it says, “What held it though on one side was a tree still growing, and on one a stake and prop, these latter about to fall.

A final irony in the poem is that even though the wood-pile was never set on fire by the man who prepared it, nature is still “burning” the wood, “with the slow smokeless burning of decay”. This might be construed as proof that despite our best efforts to control nature, nature will always continue to exist long after man has vanished. The wood was carefully cut and split, and stacked in a neat pile. To support the pile and keep it from falling over, a stake and prop was set in the ground, opposite a tree.

Frost makes a point of stating in line number thirty-three, that the tree was, “still growing”. The stake and prop were about too fall, and the wood had never been burned. But nature superceded these efforts by growing clematis vines around the wood-pile, and by recycling the wood with the “slow smokeless burning of de­cay”. It is my opinion therefore, in taking this critical approach to Robert Frost’s “The Wood-Pile”, that it is clearly evidenced by the text that man’s efforts to control nature are temporary and fleeting, and nature will con­tinue to persist long after man has disappeared.