Poetic Devices

Frost works largely in a plain, conversational idiom, but the poem is charged with irony and carefully chosen figures of speech. The chief devices are explained below, with the effect each one achieves.

Irony and oxymoron

The most striking device is Frost's bitter irony, sharpened into oxymoron. He describes the self-appointed reformers as 'greedy good-doers' and as 'beneficent beasts of prey' -- phrases that yoke together contradictory ideas. A person who does good is not supposed to be greedy; a beast of prey cannot really be beneficent. By fusing kindness with predation, Frost exposes the ugly truth beneath the reformers' charitable mask: their so-called help is really a kind of feeding on the helpless. The contradiction itself carries the criticism.

Symbolism

The roadside stand is a symbol of the entire rural poor -- their marginal position (pushed to the very edge of the road), their modest hopes, and their exclusion from prosperity. The city traffic that streams past symbolises wealth, progress and the modern urban world, all of it flowing by without stopping. The contrast between the fixed, waiting stand and the fast, uncaring traffic embodies the social gulf the poem is about.

Imagery

Frost builds vivid pictures that appeal to sight and, through them, to feeling: the crude little shed at the roadside, the polished cars sweeping past, the wrongly turned and awkwardly painted signs, the sleepless nights of waiting. This concrete imagery makes the abstract theme of neglect tangible and immediate.

Metaphor

Beyond the 'beasts of prey' figure, the poem treats the flow of city money almost as a stream that the country people hope to dip into, and the reformers' scheme as a kind of drugging or soothing away of the people's real selves. These metaphors compress complex social criticism into memorable images.

Satire

The whole treatment of the reformers and the indifferent travellers is satirical. Frost holds their behaviour up to scorn -- the pettiness of complaining about signs, the smoothness of those who plan to 'improve' the poor out of existence -- and lets the mockery expose their hypocrisy.

Alliteration

Repeated consonant sounds knit phrases together and give them force, as in the pairing of 'greedy good-doers' and 'beneficent beasts', where the echoing sounds make the ironic labels stick in the memory.

Enjambment …