I dig the poem Design by Robert Frost and as such am choosing to comment on the amount of similes in it. First, however, it merits to say that the speaker of the poem is some person unnamed to the audience. The rhetorical situation is of this nameless person observing a white spider on a flowered mint plant eating a moth. What, to me, makes this poem so original and aesthetically pleasing is the ways Frost describes the rhetorical situation . He uses such similes as "like a white piece of rigid satin cloth-" when referring to the spider holding the moth. He again describes the moth in another simile "dead wings carried like a paper kite." Both of these similes describe the moth to be very frail as we all know a moths wings to be, but, they more instill a feeling a vulnerability in the moth. The imagery in this poem is also significant. Using the color white is notable because white generally is a symbol (or extended metaphor) for purity. This could be an attempt by Frost to make all objects (the flower, moth, spider) innocent to the destruction they each brought. All things were simply that of chance or, as the title designates, design. Design could be interpreted a number of ways. I like to think of it as the design of mother nature (as i adhere to no religious beliefs) but by reading Frost it would be acceptable, and probably much more correct, to think of it as a divine intelligent design. All that said i most appreciate this poem because of the beautiful and somewhat odd images Frost brings forth when describing the moth and spider (characters of death and blight, ingredients of a witches broth, design of darkness etc.) I believe the overall theme of this poem is many things happen that no one has control over. Sometimes you (better yet the spider) are in the right place at the right time and sometimes you (moth) are completely unaware that you stumbled upon the wrongest of situations in the most inopportune moment. Frost also poses the question in the last two lines of the poem "What but design of darkness to appall?-/If design govern in a thing so small." I believe he is questioning design (divine intervention) if he or she had this in mind when the path of the white spider climbed upon the rarity of a white heal-all flower.
Alexandria
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