The poem begins with a simple setup—the first three lines introduce us to the main characters. We have a big white spider on a white flower, poised to eat a white moth. The speaker sees this bizarre little albino meeting as some weird witches' brew, as all three are brought together for some awful reason.
The poem begins with a simple setup—the first three lines introduce us to the main characters. We have a big white spider on a white flower, poised to eat a white moth. The speaker sees this bizarre little albino meeting as some weird witches' brew, as all three are brought together for some awful reason.
That observation leads the speaker to a series of questions: Why is this flower white, when it is usually blue? What brought the spider to that particular flower? What made the moth decide to flutter by right then?
"Design" isn't a ghost story. Really nothing all that awful happens. A spider gets ready to eat a moth. It's the circle of life—get over it. But the philosophical argument that Frost develops begins to play with some of our deepest fears. Frost moves from telling a story to asking questions, questions that become increasingly more urgent. It is as if he is slowly uncovering all the possible implications of the scene and he is terrified of what he discovers.a
Frost concludes that if it were "design" that brought these three together, it must be some pretty dark design. In other words, it's not a comforting thought to think that God went out of his way just to make sure this moth got eaten. But that's the crucial "if" of the last line: if design does govern these small things.
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