Robert Frost brings out man’s relationship with nature. How does he do that ? Discuss referring to the techniques used in the poem.
Robert Frost is a good nature poet. He has told that the poetry should begin with delight and end with wisdom. A Minor Bird is one of his nature poems. The poem tells about man’s distance from nature. There is a bird and a man as main characters. The poet has shown how modern man has distant from nature. Though he knows that he can’t live without nature he is helpless to do that. He has used the techniques such as visual imageries , auditory imageries and rhyme and rhythm to do that.
At the beginning the speaker is in his home in a countryside as there are no birds in urban areas usually. The speaker hears a singing of a bird. He tries to neglect that singing and do his own work many times. But he could not. He don’t want to hear the bird’s singing so he wishes the bird would fly away. It shows how modern man has become selfish.
” I have wished a bird would fly away
And not sing by my house all day ”
He can’t bear the singing of the bird. As well as he neglects nature. And when it seems he can’t bear the song anymore he chased away the bird. He clapped his hands at the bird and chase away the bird. As the bird is representing nature we can see how modern man try to escape from nature.
” Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more ”
But after that he is repenting for what he had done. He thinks deeply about his undoing. And then he understands that fault is not all by himself. But he can’t understand what is the reason for chasing away the nature. The nature helps man to develop and after that man has neglected
nature.
” The fault must partly have been in me
The bird was not to blame for his key ”
The speaker understands he has done that undoing because of the society. Also all the commercialized society neglects nature. They don’t know the fact that they can’t maintain their lives without nature. The speaker says the bird is not to blame for his key. Here ‘ key ‘ means the voice of the bird. As the bird has a nice tune he uses it. But the modern man can’t bear the song. It is not a fault of the bird. Though the others didn’t understand that the speaker himself understands he can’t live without nature.
” Of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song ”
He understands how the commercialized society has affected to the nature. But he is not capable of changing the whole world. So here the poem tells about the man’s distance from nature.
Here , the bird is representing the nature and the speaker is representing the modern man. The fault is because of the commercialized society. So like this Robert Frost brings out man’s distance from nature.
The poet has used techniques to do that. The incident of singing bird on the tree and the poet is chasing away the bird makes visual imageries. The readers can build a true picture of that in their minds. And also he has used auditory imageries. The singing of the bird makes the reader hear a song of a bird. So he has used auditory imageries to convey his idea. And there is rhyme and rhythm. There are rhyming couplets such as wrong – song , me – key , door – more and away – day. So by all these he has used techniques to convey his idea more powerfully.
Here the title is ‘ A Minor Bird ‘. The title significants that this bird is not important. So the poet uses the word ‘ minor ‘ that gives a pessimistic idea. Nature has become no significant to modern man now. He can’t live with nature as he has changed a lot. Although he wants to go to nature he can not do that. But in this poem , the poet says man doesn’t want to go to nature back as he has many facilities where he lives. But he doesn’t get the freedom what he needs most. But yet he hasn’t understand that. One day the modern man will chase after nature to hold it back. But when that time has come it will be too late to do that.
So I can say Robert Frost has presented his idea about modern man and nature very successfully by this poem. He has used many techniques to do that. He knows very well the modern man has distant from nature. He wants to build up the bond between them again. So I can say he has successfully conveyed his idea about nature.