My Appreciation of Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Presenter: 彭友花

I. The brief analysis of this poem

(I) This poem has four stanzas, and is written in iambic tetrameter（四音步抑扬格） , each stanza follows an a-a-b-a rhyming scheme.

(II) The central images presented in the poem is woods (the main image of this poem), snowy evening, horse, frozen lake.

(III) Figures of Speech and Skills :

Symbolism: woods, sleep, snowy evening

Personification: the horse

repetition: the last two lines

(IV) The theme of this poem

• Using the natural scenery as a symbol to display some feelings of the poet.

• Revealing some truth of life, such as death, temptation, and responsibility.

II. Some key points of this poem

Woods: the temptation in life, or the incarnation of death, maybe the perceptual(感性的 ) aspect of the author. The author was fascinated by the lovely, dark and deep woods, and was lost in the beautiful scenery of this snowy evening. If the woods stand for the temptation of death, maybe at this snowy evening, the author was thinking about committing suicide to escape from the world. At this moment, the author was forgetting his responsibility in life, and was irrational.

Horse: the rational （理性的） aspect of the author, the reality of life. The author uses “he” to instead “it”, treating the horse as a person, and call the horse “my little horse”, which shows his intimate relationship with the horse. The horse’s attitude towards the “lovely, dark and deep woods ” is “queer” and indifferent ,which form a shape contrast with the author’s.

Maybe we can understand the woods and the horse as the two authors , one is a perceptual author who shows the inner feeling of the author; the other is an rational author who cannot forget his promises and has to keep them, on the long journey of life, he has no choice but to treat it rationally.

Sleep: stands for death, the destination of the author’s dream , the home of the author, or something else. Before he can reach to his home to sleep, the author still has miles to go; before he dies, the author still has promises to keep; before he realizes his dream, the author still has a lot of things to do.

III. What I have learned from this poem are:

(I) Responsibility

(II) Perseverance

(III) Rationality

（ III） pursuit

A life time is a year, death is winter. Even it’s “the darkest evening of the

year”, we still “have promises to keep”, even it’s the hardest time of our

life ,we still have responsibility to take. We cannot escape, we should not

escape.

Life is a journey which is full of troubles and difficulties. This is “the darkest evening of the year”, ”the frozen lake” , but the author just keep going towards his destination even after a long time’s losing. We may want to give up when we meet with difficulties on the way, but the beautiful scenery in the destination will attract us to keep going. So on the way of pursuing our dreams, we should be persistent so that we can see the wonderful

scenery on the other shore.

Life is full of temptation, we must learn how to say “no” to them. No matter how “lovely, dark and deep” the woods maybe, the author just keep his promises in his mind, and realizing that there still has miles to go before he can sleep. So no matter how wonderful the temptation maybe, we must keep our promises, our destinations and our rationality in our mind.

Everyone should have his own dreams, and try his best to realize them. We should have pursuit, only in this way

can we live a meaningful life.