1. Birches by Robert Frost
American Literature II
Instructor: Prof. Cecilia Liu
Group Members: Tom, Christina

2. Outline The Pictures of Birches Summary Rhymes Structure Setting
Themes
References

3. The Pictures of Birches

4. The silver birch with its characteristic white bark

5. Summary The birches are bent: by the boy’s swinging or by the storm
The boy is swing the birches
Climbing a tree becomes a retreat for the adult speaker

6. Rhymes
Blank verse: a type of poetry, distinguished by having a regular meter, but no rhyme. In English, the meter most commonly used with blank verse has been iambic pentameter. Source: Wikipedia

7. Structure
1~5: The speaker is guessing which factor causes the bending of the birches.
6~13: The scenery of snow falling from the birches.
14~20: The dragging birches are like girls throwing their hair to dry.
21~40: A boy swinger is swinging the birches
41~59: The speaker sees climbing the birches as a retreat from the heavy-loaded pressure in life until the branches of the tree could not undertake and then send him back to earth.

8. Setting An outside scenery with birch tree
Or in his imagery recall in his mind?
(Dramatic Monologue)

9. Themes Swinging birch tree as a transcendent escape Binary opposites:
Earth V.S. Heaven
Boy V.S. Man
Reality V.S. Transcendence

10. References
Sparknote
Wikipedia