The Telephone

1) The speakers here are lovers who are in two different places. The first speaker is trying to connect and keep her distant love alive. They are connected through the telephone and the flower that they each have, it is a symbol of their love. the line, Having found the flower and driven a bee away (11), the flower here has two possible meanings. One being, its literal meaning as a flower that shows that he is protecting their love but swatting the bee away, showing that nothing and no one can steal or suck the life out of their love. The second possibility is that the flower is actually the telephone itself, which makes the most sense because they are talking into it and the bee is the phone interference they are hearing.

2) The telephone is the only thing that is connecting the two characters, other then their love of course. Unfortunately, having a phone relationship really wont suffice if they want it to work out. It is easy to talk on the phone and tell the other person what they want to hear, but it is hard to really connect with out physical contact so you can really observe one another and get inside each other’s heads.

3) The first speaker is a man who is very confident in himself and he is very confident. He knows that she loves him and he is trying to get her to admit it again, which is why he refers to her as the someone. However she is stating that she only thought it and never actually said it, but nonetheless he was right in the end and he went to her.

4) The second speaker is a woman who is not willing to admit her love for the man on the other end of the telephone. However when she says, I may have thought as much , but not aloud, she it telling him that she never said she loved him, but she really does, and she finally admits it to him.

5) Their whole relationship revolves around communication through technology. Ironically enough the man does all the talking, trying to get the woman to admit she loves him, until she finally says that she does. Frost has a very philosophical tone throughout the poem, which is what gives the poem its calm perception.