Quandary
Quandary - meaning Summary
Choices Between Love and Hate
Frost’s poem reflects on moral paradoxes and human discrimination. It argues that good exists only in contrast to bad, so judgment and intelligence are necessary to choose what to love or hate. The speaker invokes religious and classical authority, then shifts to a comic, ambiguous pun equating "brains" (intellect) with sweetbreads (organs/food), recounting a personal humiliation that taught a lesson. The final lines turn the lesson wryly: practical, bodily experience—represented by sweetbreads—produced a kind of worldly cleverness or high I.Q., complicating neat moral distinctions.
Read Complete AnalysesNever have I been glad or sad That there was such a thing as bad. There had to be, I understood, For there to have been any good. It was by having been contrasted That good and bad so long had lasted. That’s why discrimination reigns. That’s why we need a lot of brains If only to discriminate ‘Twixt what to love and what to hate. To quote the oracle at Delphi, Love thy neighbor as thyself, aye, And hate him as thyself thou hatest. There quandary is at its greatest. We learned from the forbidden fruit For brains there is no substitute. ‘Unless it’s sweetbreads, ‘ you suggest With innuendo I detest. You drive me to confess in ink: Once I was fool enough to think That brains and sweetbreads were the same, Till I was caught and put to shame, First by a butcher, then a cook, Then by a scientific book. But ‘ twas by making sweetbreads do I passed with such a high I.Q.
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