Scansion And Analysis Of Robert Frost's 'Range Finding'

Part I: Scansion and Analysis

This analysis is going to be over Robert Frost’s poem “Range Finding” divided into two

stanzas symbolizing the effects of war through the comparison of nature. The rhyme scheme is

(abbaabba ccdeed) ultimately giving the poem a smooth and calming flow. This rhyme scheme

indicates that the poem is a Petrarchan sonnet also known as an Italian sonnet. Although the

poem does have a rhyme scheme, it doesn’t have any type of meter to the way it read.

Punctuation though seems to be used conventionally, using commas and periods where needed

just as you would in regular writing. The sonnet itself is organized in way that it opens the story

in the first verse of the first stanza, and then come back to this

To be such a short poem, it has such a powerful meaning and structured perfectly to fit the

Part II: Explication

The poem “Range Finder” is comparing the repercussions of a simple bullet passing

through nature. The term range finder is actually defined as a practice shot. This comparison is

more than just sighting in of a soldiers scope, in fact we are painted a picture that depicts this

destructive bullet cutting through a flower and disturbs a mother bird and her young has a much

greater symbolic meaning. It is actually representing the impact that war has on its surroundings,

and that it spans far greater than a bullet targeting an enemy. The first verse of the poem

illustrates a spider’s web on the battle field, and in the second stanza in the story comes back to

the spider’s web almost as if it was the initial target to begin with. Before it references back to

the spider, the bullet travels along a path that encounters and effects the nature around it, just

The speaker lets us know of the reality of what this type of

weapon is intended for in the third verse “Before it stained a single human breast” and

completely leaves the outcome out of the poem, but instead focuses on the stricken flower, while

still having the target of a human life to be stuck in the back of the readers mind. (3) “And still

the bird revisited her young,” this is of great importance to the poem, this intense truly puts into

perspective that even the violence that engulfs the surrounding nature, there is still life outside of

this death. (5) In other words, even though there is a life at stake, there is still a life that is just

beginning, and life does not simply stop because of war, life is still being lived and work still has

to be done. The spider is referenced again in the second stanza, were we would think the speaker

would transition to the bullets target, it actually explains the frustration on the spider because the

bullet strikes its web, and the spider believes it has caught a fly, but to is surprise finds just hole

that has destroyed its home. A metaphor is used describing the spider as humanized in that