STOPPING BY THE WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING by ROBERT FROST
The poem tells the story of a man traveling through some snowy woods on the darkest evening of the year, and he's pretty much in love with what he sees around him, in near silence, he is tempted to stay longer, but acknowledges the pull of obligations and the considerable distance yet to be traveled before he or she can rest for the night. The theme depicts on obsession and the success of that obsessed mind to get rid of its obsession thinking about the promises which the speaker must keep. Here the most important part lies in the symbolism of ‘conscience’ by the little horse’. This conscience compels the badly obsessed mind to think and in its success the mind thinks and realizes the pointlessness of being obsessed. Frost presents the speaker of the poem as a horse rider who is tempted to stay longer stopping by a lovely scenario of a snowy evening. But his little horse’ understanding of the futility to stay there and shaking of its body, shakes the mind of the traveler and he realizes the pull of obligations and the considerable distance yet to be traveled. This stopping resembles the theme of obsession as an obsessed mind stops thinking of anything else without the desired object and the realization of the mind in the last stanza suggests the success of it to get rid of the obsession.
The poem is a first person point of view, so the man/woman is telling or narrating what happens in the poem. We do not know whether the speaker (narrator) is a man or a woman. In fact, we know nothing at all about the person except that he or she has been traveling on a country road in a horse-drawn wagon (or cart or carriage) on "the darkest evening of the year", by himself/herself. The major character in the poem is the man/woman stopping by the woods in the middle of the night, and maybe the minor character in the poem is the horse that is together with the narrator.
The narrator is in the woods and it is evening. The woods symbolize mystery and danger. This is evident when he says, “lovely, dark, and deep” (line 13). Through the descriptions throughout the poem, it becomes clear that the woods would symbolize the beauty and mystery of the world that most people are just too busy to appreciate. It is symbolic of the way that most people nowadays go through life – thinking only of them, being self-centered, and ignoring the mystery and the beauty of the nature that surrounds them.