Robert Frost's "Design"
...lant which all represent purity. The plant that the spider is on is called a “heal-all,” which is supposed to cure any disease. The name “heal-all” is ironic because the flower is not doing anything to restore life to the dead moth that the spider is preying upon. Frost calls these images “assorted characters of death and blight.” Then these characters are described as “ingredients of a witches’ broth” with an unknown force doing the mixing. Most people look at nature in a comforting light, while Frost looks at the subject with a totally different perspective. He sees nature as a bad thing. He asks, “What did the flower have to do with being white?” when a “heal-all” is normally blue, but for an unknown reason it is white. He also asks, “What brought this white spider and white moth to this place?” Frost ends his poem in a chilling manner by asking if the design of something so small as a spider and moth is so terrible, then what darkness is in s...