| Frost and MacLeish on Science and Purpose The poems �Accidentally on Purpose� and �Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers the Sea Shell� are renouncing scientific theory of purpose for different reasons, and coming to the same conclusion: The purpose of life is to feel. The purpose of life is to live. Mother Nature, Sister Science. What position does science play in creation? Frost and MacLeish are battling this question and describing their feelings toward science in their poems. Both authors generalize that it isn�t science and facts that make life purposeful and amazing. It is unexplainable emotions and unanswerable questions. Individually the poems are complex and thought provoking. Compared they are even more mind boggling! The issues considered in the poems are deep and questionable. They challenge the beliefs of anyone and everyone. Frost takes a humorous, open-minded approach saying, �Grant me intention, purpose, and design- / That�s near enough for me to the Divine.� (Frost 19) MacLeish condemns science more, considering it blind to anything but the facts, �Science, that simple saint, cannot be bothered / Figuring what anything is for:� (MacLeish 1) and �Metaphysics she can leave to man:� (MacLeish 11) Both poems are similar but also very different. It is important to understand them separately and also to compare and contrast them to get the full effect and meaning. The purpose of this essay is to dissect them and try and find a deeper meaning in the words. Frost�s poem �Accidentally on Purpose� is figurative. He turns evolution into, ��an albino monkey in the jungle,� (Frost 7) and unexplainable wonders into, �Passionate preference to such as love at sight.� (Frost 24) He does this to make the meaning more personal in representations that can be connected with. The situation at the beginning of the poem is humorous as Frost denotes planets, then evolution and Darwin. He renounces the theory that all existence has come about by chance, being certain there is a purpose to all that is. The tone gets more serious near the end and Frost exclaims that whatever the cause of creation, the purpose of life is to be content in our unexplained questions. �And yet for all this help of head and brain / How happily instinctive we remain�� (Frost 24) Meaning no matter how logical and educated the human race is, it is still instinct that controls human lives. People will fall in love even if their logic tells them not to. This dramatic tone change is representing the points that Frost is making. There are two sides to each person. The humorous, or instinctive side, represented by the first half of the poem and the serious, logical side in the second half. MacLeish uses personification in �Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers the Sea Shell� to personalize science from �it� to �She.� He does this to turn science into a heartless entity that can be related with. He also uses many religious terms throughout the poem to demonstrate how science can replace religion. Science, he professes, is only believing in facts, thinking there is nothing besides reality: Losing faith, losing innocence, refusing to believe in things that can�t be seen. MacLeish makes it seem it is easy to leave faith behind, stating, �She never wakes in heaven or hell� Staring at darkness. In her holy cell / There is no darkness ever: the pure candle / Burns, the beads drop briskly from her hand.� (MacLeish 12) Where does he get off being so certain about everything? Certainty is what he is talking about, as Freud offers science all those completely unanswerable questions and science simply refuses to face them! � Who dares to offer her the curled sea shell! / She will not touch it! � knows the world she sees / is all the world there is! Her faith is perfect!� (MacLeish 16) The sea shell represents unanswered questions because it isn�t known how the shell can contain the sound of the ocean. Science can never answer the most important and never ceasing question that cannot ��be contemplated soon as gathered.� (Macleish 4): What�s the point? The poems are similar in their discourteous condemnation of science. Both consider science to be nothing, compared to the real questions. What is the point of science if it can�t answer those questions? Both hint that in ignoring humanness and the unexplainable, science is ignoring the purpose of life. Both make reference to light, using it as an example of sight, or deeper thought. Frost says, �Our best guide up further to the light,� (Frost 23) in reference to where humans should find comfort and MacLeish uses a candle as a connotation of science�s one insight. Neither author straight out says there is a Divine, or that one is necessary. They both hint mysteriously in one though, both almost say that the Divine is our own self and thoughts. Though very similar each poem covers a different problem in science. Frost suggests that it doesn�t matter how life came about. The only thing that matters is that there is a purpose. MacLeish concerns himself with the replacing of religion with science and science ignoring unanswerable questions. These poems are both wonderful representations of the different ways beliefs on science and evolution can be expressed. They both leave leeway for different interpretations. Every time the poems are compared more differences and likenesses will come out of them. If Frost and MacLeish where to read each others poems, they�d say, �Hey, not bad old chap!� They are both aiming at the same opinion, only expressing it in different ways. They add or subtract different points they feel are more or less important. The poems �Accidentally on Purpose� and �Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers the Sea Shell� are renouncing scientific theory of purpose for different reasons, and coming to the same conclusion: The purpose of life is to feel. The purpose of life is to live. |