Discuss Robert Frost as a poet of symbolism.

Certainly symbolism is a key element of all of Frost's
poetry. In particular, you might like to think about how he uses the natural world as
key symbols in his poems to suggest much bigger and deeper ideas about death, choices
and success.

For example in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening," the woods are described as being "lovely, dark and deep." They are clearly an
attractive place, and although tempted to stay and delight in their quietness and
beauty, the speaker "has promises to keep." Thus we could argue that symbolically the
woods represent death that the speaker does not feel able to take up because of the
responsibilities that he has.

Likewise, in "After
Apple-Picking," the world of work and labour is represented in the harvest of the
apple-picking. Note what the speaker says about this
work:

For I
have had too much

Of apple-picking: I am
overtired

Of the great harvest I myself
desired.

Success, as defined
in the quantity of apples, has exhausted the speaker, and thus this poem symbolically
comments on work and success.

However, perhaps in his most
famous poem, the haunting necessity of taking decisions is summarised in "The Road not
Taken," where the speaker is forced to make a decision between two paths that would lead
him to different destinations. These paths and the choice of course symbolise the
decisions that we all have to make in life but which we are never able to undo or go
back and select another "path."

Thus through looking at
these three examples of Frost's work, we can see how his poetry operates through natural
symbolism to comment upon realities such as life, death, labour, success and
decisions.