Karen Spears
Professor Welch
ENGL 2604
20 October 2009
Robert Frost’s West Running Brook: A Couple’s Convoluted Conversation
In West Running Brook, Robert Frost utilizes the metaphor of the brook, repetitive
syntax, mysterious diction and contrasting imagery to emphasize the importance of effective
communication between the sexes, the subordination of a woman by her husband, and the futility
of fighting against the natural flow of existence. The conversation between Fred and his wife
illustrates the epitome of a typical flaw in marital relationships: the misinterpretation of distinct
stated words. Critics such as Swennes affirm that the couple maintains “love and mutual
understanding” (364). However, throughout the poem, the husband imposes his ideas of life
upon his wife. Swennes deduces that there was “no attempt to hide feelings” between Fred and
his wife, yet the entire dialogue confounds the husband with puzzling diction and the wife does
not show offense to her husband’s mocking (371). The majority of the poem is from the male
speaker’s perspective, of how life means nothing and there is no point going against the ‘current’
of the brook.
Fred, the main speaker in West Running Brook, dictates the symbolism of the brook to his
wife. The tone of the husband is serious and negative throughout his reflection on life and
existence, while the wife maintains an amusing and light tone. The wife tries to tell her husband
of her pregnancy, while he talks philosophically about the constant struggles of life. The husband
overrules the wife in the conversation, and talks of their place in the universe, while cutting
down his wife’s attempts to get him to understand. Main themes raised include the short lifespan
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of humans, the importance of communicating efficiently, the subordination of women by their
own husbands, and that any effort leads to nothing in life. Frost runs the poem as a normal
conversation, with free verse structure, repetitive syntax, without any rhyme scheme, and internal
rime within stanzas.
The woman speaker uses the vehicle of the brook as a metaphor to get her husband to
understand that she is expecting. The woman links herself and Fred together in lines 10-12
through the use of caesura and internal rime: “I can with you—and you with me—” and
“Because we’re—we’re— I don’t know what we are. / What are we?” Playfully toying with the
same words, the wife shows their strength together as a successful couple unified by the fact that
they “go by contraries” against the norm of society. She emphasizes the word “we’re” and asks
her husband what he thinks of their marriage as a method of getting her husband engaged in the
conversation and to listen to the message she attempts to deliver. She stammers, insinuating that
her nervous tone considering her insecurity in how her husband will take the news of her
pregnancy.
The wife starts to drop hints at the fact that she is having a baby. The first clue is in
stating “we three” referring to Fred as the role of father, the woman speaker as mother, and the
brook as the future child (15). Fred does not pick up the hint, and she continues onward in lines
16 through 18 using imagery to foreshadow their role as protective parents:
We’ll build
Our bridge across it, and the bridge shall be
Our arm thrown over it asleep beside it.
The wife attempts to unify herself to her husband, and warm him up to the idea of having a child.
She remains ambiguous with her wording, but uses nurturing diction to imply that they will make
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a new structure over the brook, and protect the baby with their arms, yet the husband still does
not grasp the point. Her light and comforting tone unfortunately is not forceful or clear enough,
thus her husband digresses on the idea with his own interpretation of the brook.
Fred misinterprets his wife’s view as the brook as a metaphor for his future child, and
tries to make some sense of the brook in his own way. According to Heuston, Fred “spends
much of his time relishing his self appointed role as intellectual explainer of the brook” and
views the brook in the circumstance of humanity’s struggle to go against the norm and be
original (Heuston 40). Swennes suggests that Fred views “nature itself [as] a void” (Swennes
368). Fred employs contrasting imagery of the colors black and white with the “black stream”
symbol as the strong current suppressing mankind from individuality and “white water” symbol
as one person going against the ‘current.’ Liebman, a critic of West Running Brook, believes that
Fred craves chaos or to be the white water going against the dark pool. The chaos in this poem
defined as Fred’s “state of mind” “beneath the surface of culturally defined order in which
human beings live from day to day” (Liebman 265). Fred repeats the chaotic imagery of the
black/white contrast in lines 26 through 28:
Like a bird
White feathers from the struggle of whose breast
Flecked the dark stream and flecked the darker pool
Fred’s chaotic and revolutionary state of mind rebels against the norm, he craves originality in a
bland and structured world. The negative dark image of the brook greatly contrasts with the
positive image that his wife imagines. Through contrasting imagery of a “dark stream” (28) and
“white water” (25) Fred reveals the nature of the brook to be stuck in time, in no way moving
forward or backward. The black connotes with negativity and no progression, stagnation,
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however the white connotes with innocence, new and fresh ideas. Fred imagines the brook as a
microcosm of the uprising of mankind against ancient thought systems.
Both Fred and his wife use the same metaphor to describe the brook but disagree on what
the brook symbolizes. Fred retorts to his optimistic wife’s imaginative view of the brook as “It’s
waving to us with a wave” (19). The wife believes that the wave foreshadows their future child,
and she optimistically shares her interpretation with her husband. However, he believes that the
“It wasn’t waved to us” (33). He continues to negatively compare the brook to the everlasting
force oppressed against society, and states the brook was “made in heaven” (33). Therefore he
still cannot understand the message his wife conveys because he is “so preoccupied with his own
critical discourse that he fails to notice the important event that is happening right in front of
him” (Heuston 40).
The tension begins to rise between the couple when the wife starts bluntly stating that she
is pregnant. The wife retorts to her husband’s “made in heaven” (33) claim by using more
religious diction: “It was to me –in an annunciation” (35). The wife mysteriously makes an
allusion to the annunciation of the Christian Mary, mother of Jesus, when she learns that she is to
conceive. She bluntly states that she will conceive, but the husband takes this statement
negatively and twists it. The husband misinterprets this religious allusion, and employs satire
against his wife: “if you take it off to lady-land” (36) and “We men must see you to the confines”
(38) “of the Amazons” (37). Essentially Fred asserts his masculinity by using the terms “we
men” (38) and reveals that she can have the brook (or future baby) for herself. Swennes believes
that the male speaker has “discomfort turned to anger” because the speaker does not understand
that the ‘brook’ is actually his unborn child and that he will own the child just as equally as she
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will (Swennes 367). He mocks womankind and generalizes that all men will agree with the
stereotype that women should be subordinate to men.
Fred continues on after mocking his wife’s use of imaginative diction and metaphor in a
long soliloquy. Ironically, after affirming his masculinity, he uses a feminine metaphor to
contrast existence with dance in lines 49 through 51:
Existence is like a Pirouot
And Pirouette, forever in one place,
Stands still and dances, but it runs away
The husband associates existence of mankind to a sort of dance. Fred over exaggerates existence
as a perpetual struggle that goes nowhere and reveals his negative view on the emptiness of life.
The contrast is reflected in Liebman’s interpretation of West Running Brook: “it is the west
running brook that stands still and dances” (Liebman 277). He describes the brook as a
“universal cataract of death” (60) with a negative tone employing diction of “emptiness” (53),
“unsubstantial” (59), and “nothingness” (61) and “abyss” (53). The husband reveals his cynical
views on the brook, a symbol for the repression of individual ideas in a lifespan. According to
Fred, life is simply a smooth flow to the dark endless depths of death. There is no point in living
as all the events that flow together in life end up in the same dark pool, soon to be forgotten.
Fred applies repetitive syntax in describing life as a perpetual cycle. He contrasts the
downs and ups of life in lines 68 through 70:
Our life runs down in sending up the clock,
The brook runs down in sending up our life,
And the sun runs down in sending up the brook.
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The husband contrasts the down and up of each element of life. As a person gets older, the time
he or she spends goes up. “Sending up” (68) refers to souls being sent to up God or back to the
source of creation, as a brook goes back to the ocean, as waves falls backwards onto themselves,
and as humans go to heaven or to an afterlife. Watts suggests a contrary interpretation: “man has
the ability to ‘send up’ something towards his source instead of reflecting, in his moral life, the
‘inevitable’ downward flow of the stream” (Watts 70). He believes that the speaker suggests that
mankind does have the ability to go against nature, and that one should not spend so much time
focused on the negative view of the brook (or nature) overriding the speaker’s efforts.
The repetitive syntax at the end of the poem seems to confirm that the wife and husband
“draw closer together” according to Swennes, and reach a compromise (Swennes 371). Upon a
closer reading, the reader may be undetermined as to whether the husband and wife are resolved
in the end. The repetition of “today will be the day” by both the Fred and his wife implies that
they are both have a “mutual understanding” of the different viewpoints they made (Swennes
364). However, Heuston provides a more accurate analysis of the poem, “it is impossible to
determine conclusively whether Fred understands his wife and they both know it, or whether he
misses her point entirely and she tolerates” him (Heuston 42). Although it would seem that they
agree at the end, it is impossible to really be sure what Frost intended because the
“indeterminacy of tone” causes “indeterminacy of meaning” (Heuston 42).
West Running Brook requires the reader to “see and understand himself in the process of
seeing and understanding others” (Liebman 278). The reader must develop his own standpoint
on nature or existence when interpreting the meaning of the poem. Without the linguistic
instability of the poem, there would be only one interpretation of the poem, because of the
mysterious figurative language; it is impossible to know what the speakers actually think.
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Readers may interpret the tone of the wife to be amused by the husband’s ignorance as to what
she says, frustrated with his subordination of her ideas or both. Although she encourages him to
keep speaking after he mocks her, the reader has to interpret the poem for him or herself as to
whether she is angry with him, or just ignoring his rude nature towards her. The reader may
interpret nature to be the driving force pushing mankind downwards, as Fred does, or nature
could be interpreted in the optimistic forming of new life, in taking the viewpoint of the wife.
Both speakers employ repetitive syntax, their own metaphor for what the brook stands for,
contrasting imagery and mysterious diction to prove their own viewpoint on the meaning of life
and nature.
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Works Cited:
Frost, Robert. Robert Frost's Poems. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 2002. Print.
Heuston, Sean "Frost's WEST-RUNNING BROOK." Explicator 63.1 (2004): 40-43. Academic
Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Oct. 2009.
Liebman, Sheldon W. "Robert Frost: On the Dialectics of Poetry." American Literature 52.2
(1980): 264. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Oct. 2009.
Oehlschlaeger, Fritz. "West toward Heaven: The Adventure of Metaphor in Robert Frost's 'WestRunning Brook'." Colby Library Quarterly. 22.4 (Dec. 1986): 238-251. p238. MLA
International Bibliography. Gale. Virginia Tech. 13 Oct. 2009
<http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu:8080/ps/start.do?p=MLA&u=viva_vpi>.
Swennes, Robert H. "Man and Wife: The Dialogue of Contraries in Robert Frost's Poetry."
American Literature 42.3 (1970): 363. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10
Oct. 2009.
Watts, Harold H. "Robert Frost and the Interrupted Dialogue." American Literature 27.1 (1955):
69. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Oct. 2009.
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