Does Truth Lie at the Bottom of a Well? Annalia Kate Hopper College

Robert Frost wrote almost solely about nature, exposing his belief in pathetic fallacies, the belief that nature should match internal feelings. Additionally, his style is vertical, meaning he looks up to a higher power or meaning. Both philosophies converge in his poem, “For Once, Then, Something,” with his extended metaphor of looking deep into the reflective water of a well. Frost uses first person to put the reader in the shoes of the narrator, a person who desperately searches for a glimpse of the unknown but is hindered by the obsession with his own reflection. A ripple caused by nature distorts the one chance the narrator has to see what is greater than himself, leaving him in a state of dissatisfied confusion. Though “For Once, Then, Something,” doesn’t explicitly define the existential meaning of personal experience and, instead, expresses uncertainty through a repetition of vague, symbolic references to “whatever it was” (line 13), the poem maintains that there is “something.” Additionally, the refusal to adhere to harsh or soft sounds, one meter or a consistent order between dependent and independent clauses, cements the feeling of uncertainty, suggesting that there is not just one single interpretation of what lies...