Modern People’s Living Predicaments:a Space Study Of Robert Frost’s Poems

Robert Frost, as one of the most famous American poet, has left abundant precious spiritual measures presented in the forms of poems or dramas for critical study. His poems seemingly are mostly about nature and the common daily trifles, which labeled him as a "nature poet". However, with a philosophical analysis about the modern meanings implied in his poems with a combination of the poet’s life experiences, attitudes and penetration about the modern society, it will be found that Robert Frost’s poems actually show us the true situations that the common people must face under the social background at that time. The age that Frost lived in is waving and turbulent:two world wars and the rising of industrialization and modernization changed people’s life and made them have to experience some overwhelming changes physically and mentally leading them to get into many living dilemmas and these dilemmas can be presented through the analysis of the cultural meanings of4different spatial forms and their interrelations, namely, the space of the realistic world, the space of the mysterious world, the space of city and the space of country. This paper aims to prove that with the development of the modernization, people’s social practice gives the space new cultural meanings, and these meanings rightly highlight modern people’s living predicaments in return.From the perspective of space to explore the cultural meanings of four different defined spaces according to different human activities, the living dilemmas of modern people will be respectively expounded in4parts. In the first part, the cultural meanings of the realistic world space are explored from3aspects, namely, hard work, loneliness and the changelings of nature. These cultural meanings rightly are the true record of human beings’living situations. The second part is linked with the first part closely. Because of the hard living situation in the realistic world, the mysterious world usually becomes a refuge to get rid of the sufferings in the realistic world. However, standing at the edge of the mysterious world, there are also some mental troubles the same to those people meet in life. After the calm consideration, sometimes people may find a way out of their mental dilemmas, but sometimes fail with some worse results like losing their original faith in life. The third part is about the space of city combining with the modern phenomenon of industrialization. The space of city, a production of the industrialization is another predicament of the modern people. It makes people the spiritual tramp and it destroys the natural landscapes which mean much for people who witness the change of their living area. Because the city space cannot bring people any comfort, they usually transfer to the space of country for relaxing, which brings the country space some special modern cultural meanings. Influenced by some modern properties, the inter-relations in the countryside were worsened, which is explored from three aspects, namely, laborers, couples and neighbors. Another cultural meaning of the country space is the commercialization of people’s mind. Though it cannot be accepted smoothly for countryside people who have already adapted to the natural life as before, the poet in his poems have to admit that commercialization has become an irresistible trend of the development of history. But he also offers some useful ways to remit people’s mental predicaments facing the living troubles.Modern people’s living dilemmas is a common topic in the modern society which has been talked about with different theories. The spatial form and dynamic state of space offer a more practical viewpoint to illustrate modern people’s living predicaments physically and psychologically.