This document provides an overview and analysis of two poems by Robert Frost: "Design" and "The Gift Outright." It discusses Frost's background and major themes in his poetry. For "Design," it summarizes the 14-line structure, rhyme scheme, and key point that the poem questions whether there is a dark design or randomness that brought a spider, moth, and flower together. For "The Gift Outright," it notes the poem expresses the poet's love for his country and how early American settlers struggled to be accepted by native people but ultimately received the land as an unconditional gift.

1. Name:Trivedi Disha Hiteshbhai
Paper no: 10 (American Literature)
Topic: Brief overview of Robert Frost poems:
1) ‘design’ and 2) ‘the gift outright’.s
Year: 2015-2017
M.A.Sem=3
Submitted to: Smt. S.b.gardi department of
English M. K. Bhavnagar University

2. About author
 Born in 1874, san
Francisco, California.
 Had many jobs including
he taught Latin, textile
mill, etc.
 Most of works comes
from his own life
experience and
loneliness.
 Married many time.
 He has dream to take a
Nobel prize for literature.
Robert Frost

3. Themes of Robert frost
poetry
 Nature
 Communication
 Everyday life
 Isolation of the individual
 Duty
 Rationality v/s imagination
 Rural life v/s urban life

4. Structure of ‘Design’
 Frost 14 line poem is called sonnet, also
known as Petrerchan sonnet.
 This kind of sonnet is composed two stanzas.
 Frost sonnets follows traditional rhyme
structure, ‘ABBA’.
 Sonnet end with rhyming couplet.
 A rhyming couplet is the last two line of a
sonnet and generally serves to wind up the
poems overall theme.

5. Key point of ‘design’
 The poem begins with a simple setup—the first three lines introduce us to the
main characters.
 We have a big white spider on a white flower, poised to eat a white moth.The
speaker sees this bizarre little albino meeting as some weird witches' brew, as all
three are brought together for some awful reason.
 Frost concludes that if it were "design" that brought these three together, it
must be some pretty dark design.
 In other words, it's not a comforting thought to think that God went out of his
way just to make sure this moth got eaten. But that's the crucial "if" of the last
line: if design govern in a these small things. (What if—gulp—there's no design at
all, and everything in life is just totally random occurrences?)
 The reader is left with just as many questions as Frost.This short poem takes a
simple little thought and pushes us all the way to questioning the very nature of
creation and life as we know it.

6. flower moth Spider

7. The gift outright
 Poem opens with poet’s love for his country.
 Poet says that land was there before they belong to that land.
More than 100 years before.
 Every state of America settlers considered that land as their
own motherland. But it was unfortunate that still they where
not possessed, accepted by the native people.
 Settlers made study that why they are not accepted by the
native Americans.
 Finally they found that the reason was different lifestyle.
 After that off course they where accepted but for that they
have to struggle a lot.
 That surrender was unconditional.
 this is that country gets from the settlers and those settlers
get this country as a gift.

8. References:
 http://www.shmoop.com/design-robert-
frost/summary.html