The Armful By Robert Frost Analysis

Decent Essays
“The Armful” Explication
In Robert Frost’s poem “The Armful” he describes himself struggling to carry his large armful of stuff. As the poem goes on it becomes clear to the reader that there is deeper meaning to the poem and the speaker is not just referencing material possessions. The speaker may be Frost, or simply any person who has had to overcome a tribulation.
The speaker starts the poem by stating his problem of not being able to carry all of his possessions. Lines one and two say “For every parcel I stoop down to seize/ I lose some other off my arms and knees”. This gives the reader an image of a person who is unable to carry all their goods. The speaker is carrying too much so things drop off, but when he bends over to pick up the
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The third line reads “And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns –“. By using the words “bottles and buns” the reader can infer that the speaker is on his way home from grocery shopping. The speaker is carrying so much that he has to use both his “arms and legs” as stated above, but that isn’t enough. “The whole pile is slipping” meaning everything is falling apart at once and no matter how hard the speaker tries to save it from tumbling down, he cannot. To make matters worse when the speaker tries to retrieve the lost items even more fall off. This makes a very frustrating situation for the speaker and a slightly humorous one for the …show more content…
“Building” is describing the heap of groceries the speaker has haphazardly stacked in his arms. Sometimes that stack tumbles, but he perseveres on.

In the next line the speaker further illustrates how much he is struggling to carry all of his parcels. The ninth line states “I crouch down to prevent them as they fall”. Try as he might, the speaker was unable to keep his stack from falling to the ground. The speaker makes one last ditch effort to keep the parcels from falling by “crouching down”. But alas he was unsuccessful as it is illustrated in the next line.

The tenth line shows the reader the speaker’s angst after he drops his load for just a moment he gives up. This line reads “Then sit down in the middle of them all”, meaning after his load dropped, he dropped down with it. At this point the readers should be able to resonate with the speaker. Everyone has been through a struggle, but it is the crucial moment in which everything falls apart which defines who you are. What the speaker does next speaks volumes of his character and

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