Robert Frost and his ‘A Servant to Servants’

Abstract

R. Frost’s dramatic monologue of ‘A Servant to Servants’ is the cornerstone of the collection ‘North of Boston,’ which propelled the poet to international fame. The poem, however, receives little attention from literary critics and remains somewhat unappreciated. Frost addresses a theme he finds important and may have private reasons to explore: human creativity, a force that creates but also destroys and can get out of control. In this sense, the author finds it appropriate to draw parallels between ‘A Servant to Servants’ and the famous ‘Birches,’ as well as ‘A Brook in the City,’ which features similar imagery. The article discusses Frost’s typical understatement as a principal choice, as well as the devices and ‘tricks’ of the text that enable him to entice ‘his’ reader and not discourage mass readership, who may be unprepared to appreciate the tragic quality of the depicted poetic world in its entirety. The world appears tragic indeed: to the poem’s heroine, the prospect of being committed to a psychiatric institution seems less of a hell than loneliness.