Reluctance Analysis

Author: poem of Robert Frost Type: poem Views: 256

Out through the fields and the woods

And over the walls I have wended;

I have climbed the hills of view

And looked at the world, and descended;

I have come by the highway home,

And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the group,

Save those that the oak is keeping

To ravel them one by one

And let them go scraping and creeping

Out over the crusted snow,

When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,

No longer blown hither and thither;

The last long aster is gone;

The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;

The heart is still aching to seek,

But the feel question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?

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||| Analysis | Critique | Overview Below |||

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When Frost wrote Reluctance, it was clear to the wider vision that an age was passing, that the Western world was entering some new and different experience. This was the age of Eliot\'s \"Wasteland,\" of Spengler\'s \"Decline and Fall,\" of Yeats\' \"The Second Coming.\"

| Posted on 2010-07-28 | by a guest

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I wanted to add something more because there seems to be a lot of confusion/discussion over the final stanza. So here is a \'line-by-line\' interpretation in the simplest of \'modern\' English that I can come up with:
\"Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason\"
When did it ever not bother a man\'s heart...
\"To go with the drift of things\"
To allow or to succumb to things just happen(ing) as they do
\"To yield with a grace to reason\"
To gracefully, willingly accept the inevitable (change(s))
\"And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?\"
And simply accept that a love has been lost, or is gone

| Posted on 2010-07-27 | by a guest

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The guest who said that \"\'Reluctance\' is about man\'s unwillingness to accept life as it flows\" is more or less correct. This becomes most clear in the final six lines, which are a dead give-away (one really needs not read more into a poem when something is clearly stated). In this poem, Frost has used the changing of seasons as a metaphor for the changes in life--and in the end he pinpoints this change to the loss of a love (a \'letting-go\' if you will, a change that one must become accustomed to but finds difficulty in doing).

| Posted on 2010-07-27 | by a guest

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Frost expreses through this sadness poem his end of his life. Though he saids " accept the end" meaning that his reletionship or something else was definitely over.

| Posted on 2010-05-10 | by a guest

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I think Frost is wondering why we are so willing to accept an end. While this poem may be about the end of life, it is also about the end of a relationship...a relationship that could have prospered had we not so easily given up. Why do we "yield with a grace to reason"? Why does reason have to make the decisions that the heart should be making?

| Posted on 2010-05-09 | by a guest

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While this poem can certainly be referencing several different topics, I think Frost may be writing about all of our inevitable journey to death. In the first stanza he writes of where he has been (the fields and woods and over the walls). These places are vast, untouched, and not easily reached. These are the places he has seen, the hills of view where he lived his fullest. He comes by the highway home in a hurry because he has seen it all and realizes it has all ended. The rest of the poem pretty much ends with him realizing that it is truly over and things are coming to an end just as the seasons do in a year. And he realizes his life was only just for a season and it must end. But it is a betrayal of the heart to lie down and accept that it can no longer live, laugh, and love.

| Posted on 2010-03-01 | by a guest

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To me Frost is describing the melancholy of Autumn, although he longs to continue, he knows deep down that his walks and explorations must come to anb end, as winter is coming. Frost is unwilling to face the dying of the year in the same way that people are reluctant to accept the end of a love affair. Both ideas hint, perhaps,at the final extinction of man in death. In a way i think that the poet see's autumn as a metaphor for human mortality.

| Posted on 2010-02-22 | by a guest

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I came across this poem in the hospital after my mother's death and with that in mind this poem seems to analyze the way in which we will always try to fight the inevitable. always reluctant to let go.

| Posted on 2009-05-25 | by a guest

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In the first lines a man has come to the end of his journey. Things of nature are dying all around him, yet the heart desires to continue to wander or live but doesn't know whats next. The last stanza asks the confused heart if it thinks it should just give up, accept that its fate is that of the things around it..or whether it should fight and live.

| Posted on 2009-05-21 | by a guest

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Its Frost urging the reader not to just accept things, dont go against your heart. In the heart of man, when has is NOT been a treason to just give in. Your betraying yourself by just accepting something.
Just because something ends, and you cannot stop it or you think it cannot be stopped, don't just accept it. Follow your heart that is "seeking" and ignore your feet that question the logicalness of where you will go. Do NOT be reluctant.

| Posted on 2009-03-17 | by a guest

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i im naveen from class 821, I want to know more about this poem , please post ur interpretation, i need at least a page long double space

| Posted on 2009-03-02 | by a guest

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He doesn't want change, and he will not accept it. See how he mentions treason? He's refering to letting go, and how when love last not forever, it's almost defiance.

| Posted on 2009-02-07 | by a guest

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"Reluctance" is about man's unwillingness to accept life as it flows.

| Posted on 2008-09-12 | by a guest

.: Reluctance :.

"Reluctance" is a rich poem that refers to seasons in a telling way as he compares human feelings about seasons and feelings about love.

| Posted on 2008-04-01 | by a guest

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