로버트 프로스트의 시에 나타난 고독과자기 긍정

초록

This paper aims at analyzing multiple levels of meaning conveyed through the poetic speaker’s loneliness in Robert Frost’s poems. The circumstances surrounding the speaker’s solitude vary widely, but in most cases, the speaker concentrates on himself in the isolated situation. Also, the solitary experience leads the speaker to become keenly aware of the others’ existence, realizing other people’s somewhat hostile view of himself. Yet, instead of succumbing to the others’ perception, the speaker attempts to interpret the individual experience in his own way and ultimately arrives at the moment of self-affirmation. Some of his earlier poems, such as “Into My Own” and “The Self-Seeker,” share similar impulses that allow the speaker to search for his own identity and confront a solitary situation in this process. “The Road Not Taken” displays how the speaker invests his past choice with personal meaning and constructs a positive form of autobiographical narrative. “For Once, Then, Something” highlights the speaker’s somewhat proud affirmation of individual experience distinguished from the others’ generalized perspective on the world. Frost’s later poems, such as “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Acquainted with the Night,” and “Desert Places,” present extremely isolated circumstances that nonetheless provide the speaker with an opportunity to embrace a precious moment of self-affirmation. Through a careful reading of Frost’s poetry, one can understand the ways in which loneliness paradoxically leads to profound experience of self-discovery.

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