In poetry, something as simple and small as a spider sitting on a flower can bring about the deepest life questions. This is exactly the case in “Design,” one of Robert Frost’s most renowned poems that he wrote in 1922. In Robert Frost’s “Design,” Frost utilizes juxtaposition though natural similes and rhetorical questions to parallel the poem’s structure of comparing the white spider on the heal-all to evil and corruption in the world. Just as Robert Frost’s “Design” evolves in comparing the white spider on the heal-all flower to deep philosophical questions, similes throughout the first eight stanzas create a major contrast between the flower and the spider. Throughout the poem, Frost utilizes similes such as “like a white piece of rigid satin cloth” (Frost 3) and “like the ingredients of a witch’s broth” (Frost 6) to completely contradict the destruction and hate of the killer spider to the goodness of the healing flower. In effect, Frost …show more content…
Frost writes: “the wayside blue and innocent heal-all?” (Frost 10) to express confusion in the flower’s unusual color. The speakers is not only shocked by the flower’s unexpected color but also the juxtaposition of the white moth’s behavior in the following lines: “Then steered the moth thither in the night?” (Frost 12). This deep confusion over the unnatural placement of the spider as well as the whole situation of the moth flying by creates a deep problem within the speaker. This results in the speaker questioning, “What but design of darkness to appall?” (Frost 13). In effect, the speaker seems to be reconsidering everything he formally knew and sees the world in an entirely new and confused manner as a result of this strange flower and