Student Question
Why does the horse think a mistake has been made in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"?
Quick answer:
The horse in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" thinks a mistake has been made because it is accustomed to a familiar route, typically stopping at farmhouses or continuing home. The speaker's unexpected pause in the woods on a dark evening is unusual, prompting the horse to shake its harness bells in confusion. This action is a form of soft personification, highlighting the horse's inability to understand the deviation from its routine.
The horse's behavior suggests that this is a familiar route. No doubt it runs from the speaker's farm into town and back, and the horse has been over it countless times. Proof that it is familiar is provided by the opening lines:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
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My little horse must think it queerEvidently there are some farmhouses between town and the speaker's farm. But the nearest one would be by some now frozen lake, which would be some distance beyond the woods where the speaker has stopped. He must be on his way back from the trip. The fact that it is growing dark is a further indication that this is the return trip. The horse would naturally be looking forward to getting unhitched and put in a warm stable with something to eat. It shakes its head because of impatience, not exactly to ask a question. We have often heard of milk horses that are so familiar with a route that they will stop automatically at a certain location even though those customers have moved away. There is one such milk horse in the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder. It is just a matter of conditioning, but the speaker chooses to take his horse's behavior as a sign of intelligent thinking. We, at least, should be able to understand that the speaker, though familiar with the route, is suddenly taken with the beautiful sight and stops to "watch his woods fill up with snow."
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
The sense of this line is to emphasize how unusual it is for the speaker to stop on his long trip, here or anywhere, and gives us (the readers) the sense of how out of their normal habits and patterns is this pausing to look at, and hear, and feel, the world around them. While a human being may intentionally change his behavior, the horse, without self-consciousness, does not have the ability to understand why the pattern of behavior -- steady plodding home to the barn -- has been altered. There is a kind of soft personification here -- Frost is giving the horse some human traits -- asking if there is some mistake (by giving his harness bells a shake -- not really purposely asking a question), thinking it queer, etc.