21 pages • 42 minutes read
Robert FrostPutting in the Seed
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1916A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
American Speech
Frost is famous for capturing the cadences of American speech in his poetry. “Putting in the Seed” is a good example of this because the poem is set up as a speech act (a farmer is responding to his wife’s request that he come inside for dinner) and contains the regular rhythms of humans speech. In the opening lines, the phrases “come to fetch me,” “supper’s on the table,” “we’ll see,” and “If I can leave off” (Lines 1-3) all have a conversational feeling to them. These are easy, common, casual phrases: They’re conversational rather than baroquely poetic. In Line 5, the revision of “Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite” has the feeling of a man muttering to himself. These casual phrases and rhythms in the opening lines are underscored by the fact that there are only two words longer than two syllables in the poem: “burying” and “tarnishes” (Lines 3, 12). Longer words do crop up in conversation and in “Putting in the Seed,” but they are not as common as shorter, more direct diction choices.
Slave
For hundreds of years, enslaved people were forced to work the land in North America—first in the American colonies, later in the United States. In “Putting in the Seed,” an American speaker describes farming and describes himself as a metaphorical slave: “Slave to a springtime passion for the earth” (Line 9). He does not, however, acknowledge his country’s history of profiting from slavery. By 21st century standards, this metaphorical use of the word “slave” in a poem about farming the land may be considered insensitive.
Apples
In “Putting in the Seed,” the speaker is planting apple seeds. Although crab apples are native to North America, fruit apples are not; they were brought to the continent by European settlers. Nonetheless, apples are now commonly associated with being American, as in the saying, “As American as apple pie.” Thus, the fact that the speaker is planting apple seeds while he’s muttering (either to his wife or to himself) underscores the idea that his speech is American (discussed above).
Moreover, apples are a fruit Frost used in other poems, as well. Frost’s second book, North of Boston, includes the poem “After Apple-Picking.” In that earlier poem, the speaker is exhausted after a day of apple picking. In “Putting in the Seed,” the speaker is enthralled and invigorated by planting apple seeds. Both poems, however, have the cadences of American speech and both use apples to help underscore a connection to the United States without overtly focusing on the location.
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