Abandonment and Singularity in Robert Frost's Poetry

“One is the Loneliest Number” or “Does Zero Count?”

Abandonment and Singularity in Robert Frost’s “The Census- Taker”

Robert Frost’s approach to human isolation is always an interesting exploration. His poem of desertion and neglect paired with eternal hopefulness ignite the reader in his poem “The Census-Taker.” All of the elements of a Frost poem are in this particular poem. “The Census-Taker” must be from an earlier time in Frost’s career because the poem is written in an open, free verse similar to the style of his earlier 20th century poetry like “Mending Wall” and “After Apple-Picking.” Also, the language lacks the sophisticated word selection a reader of poetry might find in Wallace Stevens and instead uses simplicity to elaborate the story. As Frost matures, his poetry becomes more structured in an identifiable, categorical style with systematic stanzas and perfectly paired couplets. Some verses in “The Census-Taker” carry unstressed and stressed syllables, which echo the seemingly similar attempt in “The Wood Pile” at flawed iambic pentameter. In addition, Frost places himself in the poem, as the sharp first person narrative, simply passing through a nearby wood to perform his job duties. The poem is cognitive. My favorite element of Frost poetry that he purports in “The Census-Taker” is his use of the chiasmus. Something there is in Robert Frost that does love a chiasmus, mainly those designed to teach a moral point. Specifically, however, the poem revolves around the actions of the census-taker. It is an autumn evening in New England. He intrudes a poorly kept, abandoned home where there is no one to intrude on. Paradoxically, he attempts to count the people who are not there. The census-taker realizes after many hours that this house is the only evidence of civilization for many miles surrounded by cliffs. The windy evening meets the neglected, dilapidated home only to shake creaky walls. At one point, the census-taker feels compelled to scoop an ax-handle from the floor to defend him from the sound of nothingness smothering him. His resolve later is to leave the desolate location.

Beyond the moral parable of “The Census-Taker,” Frost puzzles the reader with this notion: How should you count zero? What does one do with the number zero? Is there morality in the number zero? In the opening sixteen lines, Frost ties the tightest rope he can around the idea of “one.” In the first line, he repeats “one” four times: “one cloud-blowing evening,” (line 1) “one room,” “one window,” and “one door” (line 3). He continues to brainwash the mind with singularity, saying “only dwelling” (line 4) to describe the empty home and chooses to omit “one” when he mentions the surrounding “hundred square miles” of mountain. This omission of “one” is odd and out of place. By now, the reader is addicted to the seclusion and isolation of “one” that Frost is careless to omit it. However, Frost returns to his own device and further “one”-nifys his reader by using “none!” Repeated four times and abused via an awkward double negative, the effect of “none” is numbing. The speaker’s odd chiasmus, “I found no people that dared show themselves,/None not in hiding from the outward eye” (line 15-6) is perplexing with its bold negation to claim there are no people to be found nowhere, .The only direction Frost and his reader may go is down and deeper into this autumnal environment. Not only does Frost play with the sound and meaning of “one” and “none,” he also plays with the arguably the most famous singular pronoun: “I.” The first line begins with “I came,” and the rest of the poem “I” subtly contrasts with “eye,” as shown in the previous odd chiasmus. The speaker point out what is not there often, but one should ask: Census-Taker, where is your you? Where is the other person of yours to make you feel less lonely? The denial the census-taker carries with him echoes the speaker from another poem by Frost, “Desert Places.” There, too, the speaker is alone in a desolate landscape, surrounded by empty, threatening space. As the census-taker criticizes the solitude of the dwelling he is a stranger to, he fails to realize that he maintains the same oneness that he finds so troubling.

Moving forward, Frost’s usage of singular adjectives stands out like a sore thumb as he continues to describe the damaged home. The census- taker mentions “every tree,” (line 18) talks about the leafless trees that would not help a passerby identify the seasons. Grammatically, the adjective “every” carries a paradoxical element. “Every” plays the role of a singular modifier, yet it describes objects in a group a least larger than three and cannot be used for merely two objects. “Every” is not wholly singular as the adjective “each” may be, nor is it