“He thought he kept the universe alone,” too most people the thoughts of
being alone are very frightening. It is human nature to search for
companionship. In the poem “The Most of It,” Robert Frost uses a wealth of
strong imagery to tell a story of a person who has lost his loved one to death
and has to suffer the feeling of loneliness and emptiness created by it. Frost
uses the setting of a lake surrounded by a forest to convey a feeling of peace
and of being alone to the reader. A man is sitting on the edge of the lake,
crying out for someone, his echo being his only company. After time, a buck swam
across the lake and appeared on the shore and abruptly runs into the brush, away
from sight. Although the man only caught a glimpse of the deer for a short
moment, it was long enough for him to feel that he was no longer alone, but had
something there, even though it was not tangible. The clues given to the reader
that someone has passed on are the words “wake” and three lines down, the
word “morning.” A wake can be many things; one is that it is a vigil that is
held in honor of a person who has recently died. “Morning” can be taken as
“mourning” and be seen as Frost grieving for a loved one. One also develops
the impression that Frost is mourning a great loss, such as a spouse or soul
mate, because of the line, “He would cry out on life, that what it wants/ Is
not its own love back in copy speech/ But counter-love.” That quote shows the
reader that the man was alone, so alone, that he “cried out on life” asking
for it to give his lost love back. He doesn’t want to love someone who agrees
with him wholly, and had no ideas of their own, but someone who is articulate,
and has opinions of their own. He wants someone he could talk to and love for
who they are, not who they try to be. He had this in his lost love, and now he
has no one to share his feelings and emotions with. He was truly alone in the
world. “Nothing came of what he cried,” until one day when an amazing thing
happened, something appeared that made him no longer feel so alone. “Instead
of proving human when it neared/ As a great buck it powerfully appeared.” This
“buck” symbolizes his lost love, instead of coming back to him in her
tangible form; he realized that she was all around him, no matter where he was.
She was always in his memories, in his heart. He no longer felt alone, but at
peace knowing she was in a better place, but still with him. Although the poem
has rhyme scheme (a,b,a,b,c,d,c,d,e,f,e,f,g,h,g,h,I,j,I,j) it feels more like
Frost is writing a first draft of a story. The last line, “And forced the
underbrush—and that was all.” Seems a rather abrupt ending. The buck came
and went, and that was all. It seems as though Frost wanted to say more, but
wasn’t able to. It also seems a sad ending, in that the “buck” came into
his life and left just as quickly, leaving only a memory. Frost does not give a
tangible identity to what he was looking for. He uses the term “it” to
describe this thing. He does not know exactly what he wants, so giving it the
broad term of “it,” allows for “it” to be anything. Frost is searching
for something to fulfill his empty heart, and he finds that in the “buck.”
In the beginning of the poem Frost is crying out, trying to find something to
fulfill his loneliness. By the end, he has found something to lessen the pain of
his loss, but it is fleeting. Although, it was able to ring Frost to the
realization that he was not alone, but what he was looking for is always around
him. Frost found what he was looking for, but not until he came to terms with
his loss. He will never be alone again, and he never was in the first place, for
he had the memories, of his wife. Those memories will always remain the same and
will always keep her in his life.