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Name: Safiya Arifo Abdul Hameed

SRN: 120266230

Course: Approaches to Text

Course Code: EN1010

Tutor Group Letter: B

Tutor Name: Helen Palmer

Question from past 2012 exam:

SECTION A

1. EITHER comment on ONE, OR compare and contrast TWO, of the

following examples using terms and concepts you have encountered in studying

for this course. You should pay attention to issues of form as well as content.

Example C- Read Robert Frosts poem, The Most of It (1942).

The Most of Itby Robert Frost

He thought he kept the universe alone;

For all the voice in answer he could wake

Was but the mocking echo of his own

From some treehidden cliff across the lake.

Some morning from the boulderbroken beach

He would cry out on life, that what it wants

Is not its own love back in copy speech,

But counterlove, original response.

And nothing ever came of what he cried

Unless it was the embodiment that crashed

In the cliff's talus on the other side,

And then in the far distant water splashed,

But after a time allowed for it to swim,

Instead of proving human when it neared

And someone else additional to him,

As a great buck it powerfully appeared,

Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,

And landed pouring like a waterfall,

And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,

And forced the underbrushand that was all.
https://english.elearning.london.ac.uk/user/view.php?id=1196&course=192https://english.elearning.london.ac.uk/user/view.php?id=1196&course=192


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This short poem illustrates the story of a lonely man seeking for human

contact, and his fleeting encounter with a buck who just couldn't care less.

The poem begins with the man, a nameless individual in a mysterious,

unidentified location. It is learned a little about this man at first, other than the

fact that he appears isolated: He thought he kept the universe alone. The

loneliness of his physical location appears to support this view: he issurrounded by a lake, by tree-hidden cliffs, by a boulder-broken beach.

There is also a point where it is understood that there is a desire for human

contact. Despite of his feeling that he is the only person in the whole universe,

he longs to be proved wrong, and often calls out across the lake, his words

being met only by the mocking echo of his own. This undefined individual

represents a universe full of emotions: virtually every human being wants and

needs to be in contact with others, not its own love back in copy speech, /

But counter-love, original response. Then one day, he hears something other

than the teasing, frustrating echo of his own voice: in the far distant watersplashed, and the man hears something swimming to shore. He asks himself,

Who could it be? Has someone come at last to relieve his solitude?

There is also a important detail in this poem which is the action in contrast

to the inactivity. The contrast between the two characters in the poem is

striking. The poem begins with inactivity: the only action is the man

performing as he is crying out, otherwise he spends his time thinking,

waiting and hoping. The buck, on the other hand, is associated with a range of

dynamic verbs: swim, pushing, landed pouring like a waterfall,

stumbled and forced all give an idea of a appearance of activities once

the buck appears. His physical strength is clear from these verbs and from theline as a great buck it powerfully appeared, unlike the man whose power

seems linked with mental rather than physical activity.

The structure of the poem reinforces these ideas. The final twelve lines of this

twenty line poem are all one long sentence, encouraging the reader to speed

up as they enter those lines describing the buck, coming to a climax in the

final three lines which all begin with and, stressing the idea that the actions

of the deer follow one after another without pause. The regular rhyme scheme

and use of iambic pentameter also add to this very regular and insistent

rhythm. Ultimately, though, the poem is to end in disappointment. The buck isunwilling and unable to provide the man with the companionship he needs,

and the whole event proves nothing but an anticlimax: - and that was all.

The hyphen forces a pause upon us, and the use of four monosyllabic words

after the whirl of activity that has preceded this line brings us, and the man,

back down to earth with a bump.

In my opinion the poem is called The Most Of It, perhaps because it

represents the idea that nature is unable to fulfill a supportive role in the lives

of human beings, this brief encounter representing the most the man could

have hoped for. Or maybe we should see it as something of an admonishment:

in this poem, we see the buck busy and active, getting on with and enjoying

his life, while the man wishes his away waiting for something that might never


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happen.

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