Symbol Analysis
Somehow, spiders ended up with a bad rap. For our money, it's the legs. You know, insects are creepy enough with six, but you throw those extra two in and it just pushes it over the edge. Spiders are a traditional symbol of cruelty and torment, particularly in contrast to innocence—think "Little Miss Muffet." But there's more to them than just spookiness. Spiders are weavers of intricate webs. In Greek mythology, Arachne challenged the goddess Athena to a weaving contest and was turned into a spider for her arrogance. Not only that, the tangled webs they weave are intricate. They are the "small" things Frost is talking about in the poem. And those intricate webs are… wait for it… designed to entrap and kill others. So, a spider is a perfect symbol for "Design."
- Line 1: The first image of the spider is childish, but it's also a sickly white and bloated spider. We start with a contrast between light and dark imagery.
- Line 11: Frost refers to the spider as a "kindred" creature of the other characters in the scene. Even the cruel killer is part of this design, and carries out its own designs in turn.