The Longing for Childhood Preservation
             In the poem "Birches" by Robert Frost, he uses the image of a young boy swinging freely from the branches of birch trees. The boy is careful enough with the branches so they do not break, but simply bend. The poem is remembered through the memory of an older man who travels back to a time to when he was young and carefree, to escape the harsh realities of the real world. Frost's reference to nature allows the reader to distinguish the differences between the young carefree attitude of boyhood compared to the stress, and loss of control in adulthood. Frost also refers to the transition from boyhood to manhood, and how important it is to preserve childhood for long as possible.
             The first memory the man recalls is image of a young boy swinging on the birch branches causing them to bend all the way to the ground, but being strong enough to recapture their shape, and not to break. He uses this to describe how the branches bend through the years. Ice storms are the real reasons that the branches bend, but it is not as nice of thought as the boy swinging on them. " But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay as ice storms do. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice and sunny winter morning After rain" (Frost). The swinging is used to signify how a young boy does not have any worries because everything in his life just falls back into place, unlike the ice storms that are much like adulthood because once the weight drags the branches down to the ground, it is very hard for them to right themselves.
             Frost uses a young boy that lives in a rural area and does not get involved with group activities such as baseball; Instead, he goes out in the woods and plays in the woods. Here he creates an imaginary world that is all his own. Here he can be king of the world and has no one to tell him any different. "As he went out and in to catch the cows some boy too far fr...