An Examination of Diction in Robert Frost's "Design"

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

If you want to hear this poem read aloud, go here.  
So, as I always say, this piece is my intellectual property and if I catch anyone nabbing it for use as their own I'm going to be angry.  This paper received an A- in my Intro to Poetry course.  Seriously, don't steal this.

“Design”, by Robert Frost, is a nuanced and multi-layered piece of work.  At first glance, it seems to be fairly straightforward and innocent, but if one inspects the poem on a word-by-word level, a darker undertone begins to show itself.  The poem is organized into an extremely ambiguous octave that describes a scene in nature as viewed by the speaker, a passerby.  This is followed by a sestet that is comprised of deep questions that rapidly expand outward and, ultimately, challenge our perceptions of the world itself.  Frost makes expert use of the positive or negative connotations of individual words in order to suggest a more sinister worldview.

            The first line of “Design”, “I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,” is fairly pleasant.  The choice of the words “dimpled,” “fat” and “white” make it so.  “Fat” evokes images of bountiful food and jollity, “dimpled” is associated with children’s faces and people’s smiles, “white” is associated with purity, cleanliness, and light.  Line two continues in much the same way, “On a white heal-all, holding up a moth”.  The image of “holding up a moth” appears to be a supportive sort of action, one that seems positive—at least in the way that it is described.  When the speaker describes that the spider and moth both exist on the top of a plant, he is very specific about the type of plant; a “heal-all”, a common herbal remedy.  This specification is another positive image, blatantly using connections with healing and repair.  “White” is repeated, and it still carries all for the positive weight from the first line, although now it’s colored slightly differently than it was before.  A quick trip to an encyclopedia or online search engine will inform readers that a “heal-all” is a blue-violet flower.  Now the repetition of “white” takes on a different hue—the “heal-all” plant that the speaker is observing is not its natural color, most likely, the cause of this is a disease of some sort.  In just two words Frost has provided a twist of irony; the “heal-all” cannot heal itself.  This is the first of many such nuances that occur in “Design”.  Line three repeats “white” for the third time “Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth” and, by tying in the “rigid satin cloth” image, has described the material of the average wedding gown.  There’s a positive image for the moth’s relationship to the spider.  But with the addition of the word “rigid” Frost has given the situation a contradictory feel.  “Rigid” may be referring to the stiffness of the limbs that occurs in corpses, that is, rigor mortis. 

            Things take a turn for the worst in line four, with “assorted characters of death and blight”.  “Death” is obviously filled with negative connotations, as well as “blight”, or disease.  Line five continues the same imagery, “Mixed ready to begin the morning right”.  The word “mixed” especially after following “death and blight” brings to mind images of a witch’s cauldron and all the supposedly foul things brewed there.  The phrase “ready to being the morning right” at first sounds like a commercial for orange juice, evoking images of sunrise and happy families gathered around a kitchen table.  Both the words “morning” and “right” are, however, homophones—when read aloud, the phrase could just as easily be understood as “ready to being the mourning rite”, as in practices of grief.  In the sixth line of “Design”, the idea of witchcraft is stated outright “like the ingredients of a witches’ broth—”, however, the word “broth” has some positive connotations associated with it.  “Broth” is like the chicken soup to be eaten when one has a cold, a common folk remedy, like the heal-all plant.  “A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,” in line seven, repeat the white imagery again, with the “snow-drop” imagery.  Snow is pure and white, but it also only occurs in the wintertime which is heavily associated with death and barrenness. “A flower like a froth” is a puzzling simile, but a possible conclusion is that it refers to the foaming-at-the-mouth exhibited in rabid animals, implying that the discolored flower is diseased like a rabid animal.  Frost ends the octave with “And dead wings carried like a paper kite.”  The phrase “dead wings” has a negative connotation since it implies a death of the freedom that is commonly associated with winged creatures—this also is the prelude to the questioning tone that fills the sestet.  “Paper kite” is the final evocation of the innocence imagery so prevalent in the opening of “Design”, with images of children at play.

            The first two lines of the sestet are the same idea, “What had that flower to do with being white,/the wayside blue and innocent heal-all?”, with the second line behaving like an adjective, modifying “flower” from the previous line.  The speaker is now deconstructing the description he just gave in a search for some explanation or greater meaning.  The next two lines “What brought the kindred spider to that height?/Then steered the white moth thither in the night?” as similar sorts of questions.  The speaker seems unconvinced that he has stumbled upon a mere coincidence, he is determined to make sense of the small spectacle he has been witness to.  Frost brings back the “white” imagery in the sestet’s fifth line by punning on the word “appall”, “What but design of darkness to appall?—” “Appall” means to horrify, or, more specifically, to turn white with fear, since it is linked to the word ‘pallor’, which is a white color of the flesh, commonly associated with death. 

            The poem ends with another turn of the screw; throughout the poem, Frost has been hinting at some dark agenda at work in the natural events described, but then in the last line he gives readers this: “If design govern in a thing so small.”  He writes his audience into a corner, presented with only two disheartening conclusions.  Either that dark forces are at work in seemingly random moments in our lives deliberately constructing horrifying spectacles.  Or that no such forces exist at all, that “design” does not govern things as insignificant as human experience, or the death of a moth, or the sickness of a healing flower, or the luck of a spider. 

            By a careful and precise choice of diction in “Design” Robert Frost has managed to create a heavily ambiguous poem.  On a cursory reading, it seems to be merely about a strange coincidence that the speaker has been part of, but as soon as the words themselves are dissected, a much deeper, philosophical question arises.  The poem seems to be asking its readers the deeply troubling questions; ‘what if the world doesn’t work the way we thought it did?’, and most problematic of all, ‘what if there isn’t any design at all?’