The poem:
• Blank verse
• Colloquial language
• Themes: Human relationships, the importance of genuine art and poetry and how it builds bridges between people separated by different nationalities, culture and views.
Human relationships:
The narrator seems condescending, suspicious, even contemptuous towards Baptiste. He uses crime or assault orientated language when describing Baptiste’s interruption of his work as if Baptiste had bad intentions towards him, ‘stole one day (…) in [his] own yard’ (here, the use of ‘own’ reflects the narrator’s indignant tone – it’s his yard! What is Baptiste doing there?) and ‘disarm[ing]’ him by taking his axe. The enjambments at the end of the sixth and seventh verses mark a pause, causing the reader to pause in their lecture and physically hear the silence in which Baptiste slunks into the yard, catching his neighbor off guard. The dash in ‘then took it from me – and I let him take it’ also marks a pause, as the narrator hesitates to defend himself or allow Baptiste to take his axe. This shows the narrator is suspicious and unsure about how to react to this strange neighbor silently coming in his yard. He’s more ready to assume Baptiste is here with bad intentions, rather than friendly ones, fearing that he’s here to confront him about something and sees him as a ‘bad neighbor’. When at Baptiste’s house, the narrator continues this line of thinking, wondering if Baptiste is ‘overjoyed’ at ‘having got [him]’. This is the narrator making fun of Baptiste’s enthusiastic ‘overjoyed’ personality – he clearly wants to make friends as the narrator reinforces later on (‘Was I desired in friendship?’)- but instead of being sympathetic, the narrator makes it sound as if Baptiste is a predator who is pleased at ‘having got’ or trapped a piece of prey in his den. Judging from the narrator’s tone, we can assume he is making this joke because Baptiste is clumsy and perhaps over-eager in his socializing, maybe too overpowering in his friendliness (the ‘over-warmth of kitchen stove’ in Baptiste’s house was perhaps an overly-assiduous preparation for the narrator’s arrival showing how much Baptiste wants to please the narrator by making him as comfortable as possible), whereas the narrator, on the other hand, feels trapped by the latter and the so-called friendship, like a fly in a spider’s web. The narrator observes Baptiste being ‘anxious’ that the narrator might ‘suspect him of never really having meant to keep it (his bargain)’. Perhaps Baptiste is worried about this because he is very much aware of the narrator’s cold, cynical attitude which the latter does not try to disguise. We could therefore assume the narrator is being openly rude or hostile. Perhaps the lack of direct speech from the narrator, in contrast to Baptiste who speaks a lot, is meant to show his sullenness. The narrator’s tone throughout the poem is constantly sarcastic or bitter towards Baptiste, asking rhetorical questions to make fun of Baptiste’s logic and way of thinking: ‘and yet, what was that to him?’ ‘(…) what we talked about was knowledge?’, even dryly commenting that Baptiste showing him his ‘beauties’ (his other skillfully-crafted axe-helves) was a way of telling the narrator he wouldn’t ‘waste’ them on the latter – presumably feeling Baptiste is showing off in front of him and making him feel inferior and less well-equipped with his badly-made axe-helve. He makes another comment about this, accusing Baptiste of having used ‘the curves of his axe-helves’ as an excuse to ‘unscrupulously bring [him] to see for once the inside of his house’. Here the word ‘unscrupulous’ is a blatant expression of the narrator’s negative feelings towards Baptiste – he thinks he’s a seedy, sly man who just wants to show off his belongings and house. We can detect insecurity in his over-defensive tone, however. It seems as if he feels competitive with Baptiste, treating Baptiste’s invitation to come to his house as an ‘unscrupulous’, unfair act as if the latter was cheating in some sort of unspoken game. Does the narrator feel as if he should be the one proving that he’s better than Baptiste by showing off his own belongings? If so, the tables have turned, Baptiste is winning and the narrator is not happy about it. This brings into question the idea of racial-based rivalry - racism. Baptiste is French and possibly part of the largley controversial influx of French Canadians into New England in the early twentieth century. These immigrants were met with hostility by some of the New England locals because of their refusal to assimilate into American schools and speak English. Perhaps the narrator is one of these hostile locals? Indeed, he sounds unsupportive of Baptiste’s decision to ‘do his best to keep’ his children from school (note here he portrays the action as an attempt rather than a firm decision, clearly thinking Baptiste will not be able to keep them from education for long - perhaps he hopes he will be forced to send them to school by the American government?)
Baptiste's characterization:
Frost paints a rather comical, lively picture of Baptiste and vividly illustrates his speech by imitating his clumsy, strong accent ‘den where’s your hax-’ead flying t’rough de hair?’ and his repetitions ‘tough, tough!’ ‘hahn, hahn’ which reflect Baptiste’s enthusiastic child-like speech. His use of onomatopoeias ‘you give her one good crack, she’s snap raght off’ also adds to his vivid, almost playful language. Baptiste’s physical features are also interesting, his ‘thick thumbnail’ and ‘rough hand’ speak of a body with big, heavyfeatures and rough, calloused skin that is accustomed to hard physical labor. With his outlandish, amusing speech and big, bear-like appearance, we can imagine him as a big, lumbering man who just wants to make friends with the narrator yet goes about it in an awkward over-eager manner, using the axe as an opportunity to approach him. The narrator suspects that he is ‘desired in friendship’ only so he can support Baptiste’s decision to not send his children to school. This could indicate to the reader that if Baptiste is reaching out for support – perhaps he is feeling a terrible lack of it and feels alone and oppressed in this new, often hostile environment he has immigrated into. However, the narrator responds in an unsympathetic and cold manner. It is clear he just feels annoyed by the latter. Compared to Baptiste’s long sentences, made sinuous with commas and enjambments (echoing his easy-going, flowing speech), the narrator’s thoughts are short and curt: ‘Admitted; and yet what was that to him?’. It even appears he has not finished even thinking one thought before Baptiste interrupts his train of thoughts with more of his incessant babbling – the enjambment at the end of the narrator’s thought showing that, unlike most of his other thoughts which are firmly punctuated, it is unfinished. We can imagine the narrator feeling angered and irritated by this interruption. The contrast between the two neighbors is expressed in the stanza breaks between their separate dialogue (the narrator’s dialogue being internal) forcing the reader to pause and imagine the emptiness between them. The dialogue between the two makes the form of the poem irregular, reflecting their struggle to relate to each other. Here as the reader, we feel sympathy for Baptiste, the lonely child-like man who just wants a friend and distaste for the narrator who treats the latter with contempt.
Baptiste's Wife:
Baptiste’s wife is introduced as a silent woman who just sits in a rocking-chair that the narrator describes as having ‘as many motions as the world’. This simile suggests her rocking is quite vigorous and lively – chaotic even. It is also futile, ‘g[etting] her nowhere’ and even dangerous as she almost runs herself ‘on the stove’. We wonder why she is rocking like this. Is she stressed? Perhaps the narrator’s presence is making her anxious and tense. However, the narrator believes that despite not speaking English, ‘she was only feigning’ not to understand what was happening between him and Baptiste and knows more than she lets on. In addition to her anxious appearance, her nature is now painted as mysterious and strange. We can imagine her rocking violently, displaying outward, almost chaotic disorder yet with an all-knowing alertness to her eyes, which suggests she is perfectly organized and in control on the inside and knows what she is doing. It is possible that Frost is pointing out that human communication and understanding is not limited to sharing language or nationality – something that unsettles the xenophobic narrator. Just because Baptiste’s wife cannot speak English doesn’t mean she is inferior to the narrator. While she should technically be at a disadvantage, as a foreigner in a strange country, she is the one who holds power over the native himself, without having to use language. She has a capacity to understand because she is human, just like him and is more than her nationality and knowledge of foreign languages. These are trivial things when it comes to the greater emotional and psychological capacity of humanity. Humans are not confined to physical capacity but can use their emotions and their connections to create relationships, regardless of speech and other things. Frost’s message here is clear: Humans should not put up barriers between themselves and other humans based on race and language.
Nature:
At the beginning of the poem, the narrator speaks about Nature and his relationship with her. He personifies the branches, calling them ‘interfering’ as he describes how they ‘catch’ his ‘lifted axe’. This idea of the woods, the trees and their branches being fully alive and cognizant beings is continued in the next few verses. The narrator claim the trees reach out to ‘hold [his] hand[s]’ to stop him ‘from striking at another alder’s roots’. Here, we are given the image of trees not only being represented as motherly figures, gently holding the narrator’s hand as a mother would do with her child but also looking out for their fellow trees and preventing their deaths/chopping down of. The trees are depicted as a closely-knit community protecting each other against man’s interfering destructive hand. The narrator seems almost accepting of their interruption of his work, respecting their community and does not respond with contempt or fear as he does with Baptiste when the latter does the same as the trees. Perhaps he is more at ease with Nature because he is familiar with her as a farmer, which we can tell by the rural setting (woods, yard) and his activity (‘working at the chopping-block’ with an axe). Baptiste is Canadian-French and thus unknown and alien to him, explaining the narrator’s suspicion and hostility – they are a form of defense for him.
The Axe:
The axe, or rather the axe-helve, is used as a metaphor for the reading and writing of poetry or the crafting of art and can arguably seen as the thing that brings the two contrasting men together at the end of the poem. Baptiste tells his neighbor it is a ‘bad axe-helve (…) made on [a] machine’ and caresses the axe-helve with his thumb to show that the axe helve does not follow the curve on the grain – making it less authentic and genuine. The grain runs across the handle’s ‘long-drawn serpentine, like the two strokes across a dollar sign’. Now Baptiste has not only pointed out that his axe-helve is bad and seems to have been mass-produced in a factory, on a machine but he also shows a pattern on the axe-helve’s wood grain that resembles a dollar-sign, a symbol of money, basically proving this axe-helve was conceived only for the means of money and not for the benefit of true rural labor which it’s supposed to be designed for. The ‘s’ alliteration here creates a sibilant – a hissing sound, stressing the consonant ‘s’. The sibilant reflects the smooth, easy gesture Baptiste’s thumb makes as he handles the axe-helve, suggesting he is nimble with it and therefore seemingly skilled and familiar with tools. Perhaps it is this that leads the narrator to trust Baptiste’s judgment about his axe-helve as he can see how familiar and well-experienced he is with axe-helves and their quality.
The axe is also personified at great length throughout the poem. Baptiste is the first one to do so, referring to her as ‘she’, and then later the axe is described as having a ‘long white body’. This use of personification portrays the axes as important, conscious beings and makes them more real and stand out more to the reader. Baptiste blabbers on, using many creative similes, about how a good axe-helve should be: ‘slender as a whipstock’ ‘bending like a sword across the knee’. His vivid, imaginative speech is yet again obvious here. It can be argued that Baptiste seems inspired when handling axes – that’s when he’s the most eager and full of life. He knows what a good axe is like – without ‘fake curves’ and with genuine ‘lines (…) native to the grain’. His philosophy is basically that the quality gives the tool its strength and that if the axe follows the curve of the grain, it is strong and genuine. This philosophy can be applicable with poetry and the way it is written – as axes are objects of crafting and creation just like art and its poetry. It can be argued that Frost is saying that poetry and art in general should follow the ‘lines’ of the poet/artist’s heart, created from a genuine place with real visceral depth. Just like the mass-produced axe-helves made on machines, art can be false and of bad quality if it is created without real human input and solely for the purpose of money. Just like a poet or artist who creates genuine work, Baptiste displays both pleasure and wisdom in the crafting of the axe-helves, ‘squint[ing] at it (the axe-helve), pleased’. At the end, both men step back and observe the axe with its newly-crafted helve.
The narrator yet again likens it to a snake, the one that ‘stood for evil in the Garden’. It is interesting that the first thing he deduces from the image of the axe is that its curved shape resembles a snake. It is possible to link this analysis to his accepting, even affectionate description and personification of the trees in the first verses of the poem. He is close to Nature, as that first stanza established, and thus sees Nature in the axe – Nature is his form of art. It is raw and from his heart, as a farmer who works outside with Nature every day. His vision also stretches all the way back to the roots of human life – to the Garden of Eden from the Bible- when the first two humans lived on the Earth. His primal way of thinking speaks of a possibly traditional nature – reinforced by his suspicion of new, foreign things such as the French immigrant Baptiste – and shows that he has close emotional ties with Earth, perhaps often wondering about her history and beginning. This is his own art – genuine and from his heart as Frost suggests art should be, possibly referring to his own poetry which he made unique through the use of colloquial language and untraditional poetry form which he felt was more genuine than the poetry form of the Romantic greats that many people, especially rural folk, could not relate to. Baptiste, on the other hand, refers to the axe as a feminine ‘she’ with a cocked head. His vision is telling of his friendly, almost playful nature and very community/friendship-centred view of life – he simply sees a woman/girl cocking her head (perhaps shyly or in a flirtatious manner). The perspectives of the two men remain different but they can agree that they both see more to the axe. All disagreement about education or competition is forgotten and there is a moment of palpable harmony with the narrator not adding any bitter or sarcastic comments as he usually does. Baptiste’s cheery description of his own view of the axe-helve is topped off by an exclamation mark, conveying a jovial tone, and leaves the reader with a pleasant image of two men taking pleasure together in art and what they see in it. The axe-helve or more like art it represents becomes the link between two opposite men, building a bridge between the French immigrant and his American neighbour.