Frost's "Design" Imagery

Fat, white spider

White web holding a moth

White rigid satin cloth

Death and blight, darkness

Witches potion

Snow-drop, snowflake?

Innocence

Design? Purpose?

White, innocence

Dark, death

The poem “Design” by Robert Frost uses the images of white and dark, or death, to convey the meaning of the poem. The question that Frost is asking is if there is a design to life. Is some greater power controlling our lives? The poem begins with a spider, fat and white on a white heal-all. There is a moth in the flower that has been caught. The moth is compared to a “white piece of rigid satin cloth”. Cloth is usually not rigid, suggesting that something is not quite right with the image. This is showing that the though the flower looks innocent, the spider is using it as a trap. The use of the word white to describe everything in the first three lines gives an image of innocence. The beautiful flower, white spider, are not as they seem, they are cruel intentions of death. The heal-all was once thought to be a curer of all ailments, and for the spider to use it as a trap is a contradiction of its purpose.

            The next lines of the poem go away from the white, innocent view, to images of darkness and death. “A witch’s broth” is brewed in the morning with all things evil, ready to go out in the world and bring death. The spider is mentioned again, but not as being white, but as a “snow-drop spider”. The spider is now compared to a snowflake, not simple and pure anymore, but complex and imperfect. It is an ingredient in the witch’s broth, a tool of death. The flower is the froth of the witch’s potion, just another ingredient of death.  The next stanza begins with the question of why the flower was white if it was used for a dark purpose. The heal-all is a blue flower, and of good intent. It is not white or dark, but a color in-between. Not everything falls into a category of good and evil, the line is blurred. What leads the moth to meet its dark end? The design of life leads the moth there; the design is white and dark, life and death. The witch brews a broth of death, but there is the beauty of nature to contrast it. The spider and its flower are both beautiful and deadly.

Frost then asks if an event so small is even controlled by a design? That is what the meaning of this poem is. Design touches all things, even as small as a spider, flower and a moth. Nature is dark, it is white, and it is every color in-between. That is what makes nature so amazing.