The Religious Themes In Robert Frost's Poems

Robert Frost is one of the greatest American poets in the twentieth century.He was granted Pulitzer Prize four times and regarded as non-official laureate poet of America.Though at first Robert Frost got his reputation for his simplicity in language and farmer-like sage image,critics soon found his "deceptive simplicity" and even dark sides.One of the dark sides of Robert Frost is his confusing religious belief.Under the influence of his mother,Frost successively joined Presbyterianism,Unitarianism and Swedenborgianism.But he seldom went to the church.He constantly defended his religious faith in public but he also expressed his religious doubts frequently in private letters and poems,especially after experiencing the two world wars and successive family turmoil.Biblical figures,allusions and themes prevail in Frost's poems but those poems are also ambiguous and even contradictory if read separately.Therefore,it is of significance to understand the religious elements in Frost's poems for understanding Frost and his poems better.This thesis intends to read Frost's religion-related poems collectively to generalize and analyze the religious themes in his poems.A review of Frost's criticism home and abroad and a brief presentation of this essay's aim and significance are given in the introduction part.Chapter one is divided into two parts.In the first part,the thesis concludes the attributes of God from two major sources,namely,the theology and the Bible.In the second part,the essay summarizes the image of God in Frost's poems as non-omnipotence,non-omnibenevolence and constant absence by means of close reading and comparative study.Chapter two is about the problem of evil.The theological understanding and biblical interpretation of evil are given first.Then the thesis concludes that Satan is not the source of evil in Frost's poems and the human innate urge for violence and man's desire for power and wealth are to blame.Chapter three summarizes Frost's understanding of justice and justice-mercy contradiction from his poems.Chapter four focuses on Frost's thought about death itself and the afterlife.For Frost,death is perennial but painful.Frost values the present life more than the afterlife which traditional Christians fervently believe and long for.Finally,the thesis draws the conclusion that the image of God,the problem of evil,justice and mercy and the notion of death are the main religious themes in Frost's poems and Frost is not a theologian but only an untraditional Christian who is under much influence of the Old Testaments and tends to talk about both religious and mundane matters in terms of religious allusions and themes.