VCCS Litonline

Here are two responses to the essay's statement about "Birches'"--

Theme

1.  contributed by Joyce Lewis, July, 2004

Stating the theme, or main idea, of the poem requires connecting it to real life, to some vision of how life works. Has this writer achieved that goal? If you were the editor for this essay, what praise would you give for this first section while leaving it as is, or what changes would you suggest to the author?

The writer of this essay does a fine job of connecting this poem to a vision of real life.  She supports her premise that this poem is contrasting imagination and reality with the use of specific lines of the poem.   She correctly identifies reality as being symbolized by “birches bending and cracking from the load of ice after a freezing rain.  And she points out imagination is portrayed as “a swinger of birches.”

Her arguments are cleverly supported with her own lines that resonate well within this poem.  She does this when she says “Reality has its ups and downs.”   Later she argues “imagination is the gift for escaping reality…”

She concludes her analysis on the theme with an excellent summary about becoming weary from the reality of life’s everyday occurrence and that imagination is an escape that “works”. 

2.  contributed by Andrew Edwards, July, 2004

The author of the essay did a wonderful job in bridging the gap between the two viewpoints Frost provides for the reader. In the first half of his poem, we interpret the sinking of the birches, due to the ever changing whether, to be something crippling and sad. The birches are becoming decrepit due to their inability to change their surroundings. Their battered form will never be the same. The metaphor, the author of the essay states, is that life is the same way. An individual must give himself to the blows and pangs of everlasting change. Life is a weight and we must bear it.

            The other portion of the essay altars this viewpoint. Sometimes our state of being is changed by something necessary and beautiful. The child learning to escape from adolescent harshness, by using his imagination on the birches, will cause the tree pain, but the child will undergo growth and maturity. The essay’s author concludes this analysis by saying that we never fully achieve satisfaction with ourselves and our surroundings and that we will forever long for the comfort and escape the birches have to offer.

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