Old School: Chapter 3: Frost Summary & Analysis

The day after Kennedy wins the presidency, George Kellogg wins the audience with Robert Frost. His poem is published in the school newspaper: it’s a dramatic monologue in which an old farmer feels the bite of mortality on the first day of autumn. The poem is entitled “First Frost.” In the interview about the poem, Robert Frost tells the school reporter that he enjoyed the fun George had at his expense. The narrator is surprised that Frost read the poem in this way; the narrator read it as bad imitation. That afternoon, George reveals to the narrator that he didn’t mean the poem as a parody—he meant it as an homage to Frost. He’s upset that Frost interpreted the poem as making fun of him. The narrator tries to reassure George, complimenting him on the title and the details.

Once a week, the sixth-form Honors English Seminar is invited to eat at the headmaster’s table for dinner, where they share literary conversation late into the evening. It was the headmaster who persuaded Robert Frost to visit; Frost was his teacher. After dinner, Purcell chats with the narrator and reveals his astonishment at the fact that George’s poem was selected. The narrator explains that Frost couldn’t have known that George’s poem was serious. Purcell angrily criticizes Frost, saying that he’s still using archaic forms like rhyme, which give poems the sense that everything works out okay.

A few days later, Robert Frost arrives during dinner and sits with the headmaster. Dean Makepeace leads an applause for Frost, and Frost bows his head and smiles sheepishly. The boys then remain conscious of him through dinner, simultaneously trying to act as though they are and aren’t conscious of him, like he’s a “glamorous woman.”

Frost joins the boys in the chapel that night, though writers usually speak in the auditorium. The headmaster introduces Frost, explaining that when he was a farm boy, he had read a poem entitled “After Apple-Picking” and was stunned by the exactness of the detail in the poem and by its mysterious musings. He concludes that a piece of writing can be a dangerous thing because it can change a person’s life.

Frost then takes the pulpit. He talks about Shelley, who used to say that poets are the “unacknowledged legislators of mankind.” He also addresses George specifically, complimenting George on his piece of “legislation” and his poking fun at Frost. Frost then takes out his own work and reads “Mending Wall.” As Frost reads, the narrator hears new life in the poem. On the page, the poem seems predictable, but in Frost’s voice there is hesitation and complexity.

Frost reads several more poems and then takes a few questions. Mr. Ramsey, one of the English teachers, asks Frost if his rigidly formal poetic structure is “adequate to express the modern consciousness,” because industrialization, two world wars, and science dimming faith have changed people’s way of thinking. Frost asserts that science and war have always existed, and counters that Homer still wrote in dactylic hexameters. He says that grief can only be expressed in form—without form, there is no depth or weight to a poem.

As the boys file out of the chapel, the narrator sees George looking glum. George is upset that Frost really thinks he was making fun of him. George hints that he might not even meet with Frost. The narrator is shocked and calls George a baby for backing out, emphasizing that this is the chance of a lifetime. The narrator implies that if George doesn’t want to go, he’ll take George’s place. George insists that the narrator didn’t earn the audience, and the narrator says he’d still go. George dejectedly walks off.

That night, the narrator, Bill, and some of the boys in the English Club gather in Blaine Hall because it was rumored that Frost would make an appearance there. He doesn’t, but Mrs. Ramsey—the most attractive of the faculty wives—does. She says she’s standing in for Mr. Ramsey (who advises the English Club), who isn’t feeling well. Mrs. Ramsey and Mr. Rice, another English master, discuss a rumor that Ayn Rand will visit the school. Bill chimes in that he’s read some of Rand’s work and that she has interesting ideas. Just then, some of the boys break into song and serenade Mrs. Ramsay. After a few songs, the masters stop the boys and everyone disbands, given the late hour.

The next morning, George meets with Frost and relays their conversation to the narrator later. He says that Frost gave him some literary pointers, an inscribed copy of his Complete Poems, and told him to go to Kamchatka or Brazil. George says he doesn’t know where Kamchatka is, and that Mr. Frost didn’t have time to explain. Later the narrator looks up Kamchatka, discovering it is a remote peninsula in the Soviet Union. He wonders why a writer would forsake his schooling to go there—perhaps “solitude, darkness, and hardship.” But he notes that Frost lived in New England all his life at no cost to his art.