17 pages • 34 minutes read
Robert FrostDust of Snow
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1923A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1820)
Shelley is an English Romantic, and Romantics tended to view nature as stormy and overwhelming. “Ode to the West Wind” represents such a dramatic view, with Shelley depicting nature and the seasons as wild and carelessly violent. Unlike “Dust of Snow,” nature doesn’t make Shelley’s speaker feel better. Instead, Shelley’s speaker sees their tormented self in nature’s tumult. While Frost’s speaker twists the symbolism of nature, Shelley’s speaker retains the conventional symbolism, with winter representing harshness and spring signifying hope.
“Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost (1920)
“Fire and Ice” is another lyric in Frost’s collection of poems, New Hampshire. The title suggests a binary, but Frost’s speaker subverts the binary by speculating that the world could end due to fire (violent passion) or ice (stony apathy). As in “Dust of Snow,” the speaker in “Fire and Ice” is stark and formal, and neither speaker divides the world into two discrete units. Unhappiness and happiness coexist, and so do fire and ice.
“The Crazy Woman” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1960)
Gwendolyn Brooks is a 20th-century American poet. Unlike Frost, Brooks spent much of her life in the Midwest in Chicago. Like the speaker in Frost’s poem, the speaker in Brooks’s poem works with nature and experiences not happiness but a palpable lift. Similar to “Dust of Snow,” the pick-me-up comes from an unexpected source. In “Dust of Snow,” the wintery snow, crow, and hemlock tree positively impact the speaker despite their links to odious tropes. In “The Crazy Woman,” the woman speaker aligns herself with “the frosty dark” (Line 7). The irony is that the “dark” isn’t so “frosty” or “dark,” but it helps the speaker express herself. Spring, a typical harbinger of happiness, doesn’t allure Brooks’s speaker.
Further Literary Resources
“Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1836)
In “Nature,” the 19th-century American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson argues that nature gives humans the power to transcend their limitations and gain a spiritual and liberated existence. As with Frost’s speaker, the speaker in Emerson’s essay feels the healing powers of nature. In both works, nature doesn’t necessarily make people happier, but it fortifies their well-being and teaches them valuable lessons. In Frost’s poem, the speaker learns to manage disquieting feelings and not let hard feelings ruin a day. In Emerson’s essay, nature teaches the speaker to set aside their ego and gain a wider perspective of the world.
Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow by Ted Hughes (1972)
Hughes wrote his Crow series of poems after his first wife, the poet Sylvia Plath, died by suicide, and then his romantic partner, Assia Wevill, also died by suicide. Hughes’s authorial context suggests a stark tone, and the book’s poems are grim and violent. The crow is a demonic figure, quarreling with God and the general world. Unlike the crow in Frost’s poem, the crow in Hughes’s poems doesn’t heal or make people feel better. The crow can’t manage his unhappiness, and the discontent is all-consuming and tormenting. Hughes’s crow preserves the bird’s inimical symbolism.
Listen to Poem
Hamlet the Monkey, a member of the Guild of Thespian Puppets, wistfully recite Frost’s poem, and see how the YouTube video recreates the imagery from Stanza 1.
Related Titles
By Robert Frost
