On "Design"

1970

The sonnet “Design” is Robert Frost’s vision of forces beyond nature. The title is the basic motif.  The poem is developed by carefully counter pointed images.  The images display the ambivalent questions in the poet’s mind.  These questions present an antithesis:  Do the innocent exist haphazardly or do they exist enslaved to predestination?

The poem’s meaning revolves about the image-motif of “whiteness”, the traditional symbol of purity and innocence: a “white spider” upon a “white heal-all” holding a “dead white moth”.  This “white-on-white” theme is further supported by such light terms as “morning”, “snow-drop” and “frost”. 

There are several possible meanings for “white”.  The first is a depiction of “innocent”.  The spider is “kindred” to the Heal-all, therefore also innocent.  This innocent motif is carried by other images. The spider is “dimpled...fat and white”; something fed, healthy and new, such as a newborn baby.  The moth is held  like “rigid satin cloth”; the baptismal gown of the baby at the font, the wedding-gown of the bride at the alter, both innocent portrayals.  The “innocent Heal-all’s” name symbolizes cure, health and even resurrection, rebirth, new life.  These “assorted characters” are “ready to begin the morning’.  They are as fresh as “snow-drops”, “flowers”, and as light as “froth”.  The spider carries the moth like an innocent child carries a “paper-kite”.

Counter pointing the freshness and innocence is the presence of death.  Here the image-motif “white” takes another meaning.  “White” is paleness, ill health, the pallor of death.

White is non-substance. It has the strange ambivalence of “nothingness” that can be colored either “black” or “white”.  In this poem, “white seems to contrast with the “darkness”,  but are these really separate images? “Darkness” is man’s ignorance, a cover over truth, hiding the “design”.  Darkness may be the cloak of evil intent.  “White” may be something else.

There is more to the image-motif of “white” than innocence.  The “innocent”, after all, are gathering “characters of death and blight”.  Indeed they are.  Spiders, as any reader of gothic literature knows, are associated with death, decay and evil intent.  Moths are symbols of plague and blight.  Even the “innocent Heal-all” is a member of the “gathering’, for its healing powers are superstition, and is used by those whose final hope is to cure the incurable.

In this new “white” motif, the “rigid satin cloth” is not the baptismal gown, but the lining of a coffin.  The light “froth’ dissolves and beneath its insubstantial surface boils the putrid “brew of witches”, most certainly brewed with evil intent of insidious design.  The innocent child carrying a kite becomes the bearer of a corpse.  The “paper-kite” is broken and will not fly again.  All this revels the darkness.

What does the darkness contain?  What appalls? 

Throughout the poem is the basic motif “design”.  The “assorted characters” are “mixed” like “ingredients” in a recipe.  The spider is a “Snow-Drop Spider” famous for spinning webs of symmetrical and intricate design.  Moths and butterflies are collected for the design of their wings.  Is there “design” in their fate as well?  Is it of evil intent?

The poet fears such “design”.  His “characters” are presented as innocent.  They represent possible victims of some great “design’.  This “design” is usually hidden behind the merciful “darkness” of our ignorance.  The poet has had a glimpse  of this “design’ and it frightens and appalls him.  he uses appalling creatures to represent his vision, for if such a “design’ exists then everything is predestined and we have no control over our fate.

As an afterthought, the poet states that such a “design” would not extend to such insignificant creatures.  What occurred was not “design”.  It was accident.  There is no evil intent, no reason to be appalled.

There is still something else.  The “darkness” hid something, which the poet saw.  In the night a white spider climbed a white Heal-all and killed a white moth.  We return back to the white-on-white motif for our answer.  The darkness hid -- nothing!  the poet saw a chance event of small creatures and invented a litany and ritual, a design of froth.  The froth dissolved and reveled no “design”.

The poet tries to comfort himself by saying if there is a grand “design”, it does not extend to arachnids and lepidopteron.  But if there is a grand “design”, does it apply to mankind?  The poet ends wondering if there is any design” or only a “white-on-white” nothingness that man must fill himself.

For more on Robert Frost and his poetry, click on the title of this post.