Comparing Two Poems

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In “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” written by Robert Frost, there are two poems that can be compared together to gain new insight into their deeper meaning. In these two poems Robert Frost illustrates the journey of two contrasting travelers, who are given choices along the way to explore their decisions and thought processes. These carpe diem, seize the day, poems presents options for the travelers that are negative, but in the end implies to persevere. In “The Road Not Taken” the setting takes place in the woods, where the speaker has two roads and contemplates one at a time (“Road”). While in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” the setting travels from a village to the woods, where the speaker stops between …show more content…

This is important because without these key words in either poem then the travelers in the poems would not have a choice to overcome. “The Road Not Taken” uses the word yellow in “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” which means yellow trees, a time in which tree’s leaves are yellow is during the fall, autumn (“Road” 1). Interpreting this further, one can infer that the fall time, can relate to the travelers life, its a fall, a down point in his lifetime, which may offer reason as to why he is in the woods seeking choices, because he feels alone at this time. If Frost were to use a different word, or color to describe the wood then it can not be suggested that the poem does not take place in autumn. Likewise, in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” Frost writes, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” meaning that the speaker has grown comfortable in the eerie and wide woods (“Stopping” 13). By using the word lovely, Frost implies that the speaker is seduced by the woods, there is something charming that the speaker likes about the woods. The words dark and deep, implies his loneliness. By saying the woods is dark, could imply that it is evil and secretive, while the word deep implies something that is vast that extends downward like a water well. A type of woods that is, “lovely, dark and deep,” would be no place for many

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