The poem opens with the speaker noticing some birch trees which have been bent down to the ground after an ice-storm:
Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. (5 - 7)
Notice how Frost involves his readers here by using the second person pronoun “you” to address us directly, and assuming that we too have seen this particular sight. However, despite, the speaker’s realisation that nature has caused the damage to the trees, he cannot help offering a more romantic possibility:
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice storms do. (3-5)
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter of fact about the ice storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them (21- 23)
Childhood Reminiscences and Sexual Development
This notion leads the speaker to reminisce about his own childhood, although we do not realise at first that he himself is the boy he describes:
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone. (25 -27)
This idea of a young boy playing alone introduces a section full of double meanings. The lexical choices used to describe the boy’s activities are unmistakeably sexual and indicate that he is discovering more than a love of nature:
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon (28 – 33)
For the speaker, this developing awareness of physical relationships is a vital aspect of childhood, and part of his transition into adulthood.
We then learn that the boy in the poem is the speaker:
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be. (41- 42)
Freedom from Responsibility
The speaker appears nostalgic for this time of his life as it represents a time of freedom from responsibility – the biggest worry for the boy in the poem is how to reach the top of a birch tree without bending it down to the ground too soon. Thus the speaker imagines an escape to this blissful time:
It’s when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open. (43 – 47)
The imagery here reminds us of The Road Not Taken, although in this example the speaker cannot see any clear life path at all. The prospect of returning to childhood and climbing a birch tree represents the perfect break from the pressures of everyday life: concentrating on a simple task that will physically bring him closer to heaven.
A Break from the Pressures of Life
The speaker makes it clear, however, that he does not wish for a permanent release from his life: after all, when he reaches the top of the tree it will simply bend and set him down safely on the ground again:
...till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. (56 – 59)
Childhood in “Out, Out-“
Choices in life in The Road Not Taken
Elizabeth Gregory - Liz graduated from Manchester University with a BA (Hons) in English Language & Literature, and also holds an MA in Literature from the ...
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