How Does Robert Frost Use Metaphors In The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost has been and most likely will be a poet remembered for years to come. His many works have been praised for his use of symbolism and metaphors. In these poems, you simply cannot just read them and expect to grasp the meaning of what it is trying to tell you. You have to examine each line and interpret it from what you believe the meaning is. There could be many hidden meanings, or they could possibly mean whatever the reader wants them to. In Robert Frost’s poems “Acquainted with the Night” and The Road Not Taken, he incorporates the theme of individualism, symbolism, and uses many metaphors.

Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California. He spent eleven years here until his father passed away. He then moved in with his mother and sister in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Later they moved in with his grandparents, and Frost started going to Lawrence High School. After he graduated in 1892, Frost attended Dartmouth University for a few months. He only ever returned home to work a couple of side jobs.

In 1894, Robert wrote his first poem, My Butterfly: an Elegy, which was published in a weekly literary journal in New York City, The Independent. A few years later he married his wife Elinor White. When

“On the surface, the poem's premise is simple, but critics have examined the poem in detail and have discovered depths of meaning not apparent in a casual reading” (“The Road…”). The narrator and only character in the poem is just walking in the woods on a path. He stops when the road splits and has to make a decision on where to go. He does not know where either leads and there is no difference besides one looks more travelled than the other. The narrator is all alone and can’t seem to decide on where to go. The roads themselves can be a metaphor for any choice in your life. Take it one step further it can be a metaphor to deciding on how your whole life will