19 pages • 38 minutes read
Robert FrostBirches
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1915A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Birch Trees
The eponymous birch trees in Frost’s “Birches” symbolize the connection between the earthly realm and heaven and offer access to both worlds. The trees are rooted to the ground but allow the speaker to carefully climb up them, “[t]oward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, / But dipped its top and set me down again” (Lines 56-57). The birches are flexible and resilient. Even in an ice-storm, they are “dragged to the withered bracken by the load, / And they seem not to break” (Lines 14-15). Like the speaker who experiences the pain and suffering of adult life, the birches also show the marks of the storm: “though once they are bowed / So low for long, they never right themselves” (Lines 15-16). While they are physically altered by their experiences, they still survive and still demonstrate beauty even in later years, becoming like young girls drying their hair in the sun.
The speaker, and his projection of the boy, form a symbiotic relationship with the birches, climbing the trees respectfully and carefully; the birches provide the balance the speaker needs to live his life dynamically and joyfully.
The Pathless Wood
In the latter third of “Birches,” the speaker states that he dreams of becoming a swinger of birches “when I’m weary of considerations, / And life is too much like a pathless wood” (Lines 43-44). The woods provide home to both the trees and the speaker, but the speaker acknowledges that sometimes this natural world can be confusing and difficult to navigate, and his articulation of the “pathless wood” (Line 44) simile emphasizes his experience of adulthood. While as a child the birches in the wood provided joy and play, in his adulthood, the birches’ natural habitat can seem overwhelming and opaque. The wood, like the trees themselves, is flexible and dynamic, providing the speaker with both joy and confusion. This dynamic, however, is not a bad thing for the speaker, who enjoys “both going and coming back” (Line 58); he recognizes the value in both experiences.
The Boy
The boy in “Birches” represents the speaker’s, or Frost’s, younger self, and provides an opportunity to examine the role of nostalgia and youthful joy in the context of his adult life. The boy has a fresh perspective, unencumbered or influenced by the world, and has the time and willingness to swing birches. As a solitary figure “[w]hose only play was what he found himself” (Line 26), the boy develops knowledge of the trees and his sport by repetition of experience—“riding them down over and over again” (Line 29)—and self-education—“He learned all there was / To learn about not launching out too soon / And so not carrying the tree away / Clear to the ground” (Lines 32-35). The boy also learns, and represents, skill and craft, something the adult poet values and practices. He climbs carefully to the tops of the trees “With the same pains you use to fill a cup / Up to the brim, and even above the brim” (Lines 37-38). With this metaphor, Frost emphasizes his skill and control, and his attention to minute detail.
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By Robert Frost
