Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and John Updike's "A & P" are two works that
incorperate using your own personal choice to make decisions that will impact your life. The
stories show the luxury of having the ability to make your own choices. Both stories contain
themes of personal choice, I believe the decision Sammy makes gives the readers a better
understanding of the impact you have with your choices.
In "The Road Not Taken," the theme is personal choice. The poem starts with a man
confronted with a decision to make. Two roads and only one man to travel them. When someone
is faced with two options they normally weigh the two. Perhaps doing the pro and cons between
the two choices. This is exactly what the narrator does, it is stated "And looked down one as far
as I could." The speaker is examining what this one road has to offer before they go look at the
other. It is discovered that the roads "Had worn them really about the same," meaning the paths
have been taken or chosen equally. The poem shows that he figured that he would have another
shot at the other road. Thus, if this was true then personal choice would not be so important if
you have the chance to do things over or twice. When the narrator states that he decided to take
the road thats less traveled, this can show his character and his personality. In the article "Frost's
"Road" & "Woods." redux, Dan Brown states "Given the evidence, who's to say which road was
lesss traveled on" (12). This is showing that maybe he did not even take a path and therefore it
was the on less traveled. His personal choice defines him. Sometimes these choices are capable of determining your fate.
In "A & P" personal choice is one of the themes for ...
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... Person choice is mainly what you prefer. Some choices you make may be
small in the long run and other can have a long effect.
Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and John Updike's "A & P" are two stories with the
theme of personal choice. The stories show how the choices play out with thier lifes. Both stories
contain themes of personal choice, I believe the decision Sammy makes gives the readers a better
understanding of the impact you have with your choices.
Works Cited
Brown, Dan. "Frost's "Road" & "Woods" redux." Literary Referance Center 25.8 (2007): 11-13. Web. 30 Apr. 2014
Frost, Robert. Frost's Early Poems. 6,8,2012.
http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/frost/section7.rhtml
Thompson, Corey. "Updike's A&P." ProQuest Research Library 59.4 (2001): 215-216. Web. 30 Apr. 2014
Updike, John. "A&P" 6,8.2012. http://www.tiger-town.com/whatnot/updike/
And in the poem, because this was the life decision, the narrator agonize about his path. Yet, at the end he decided to take “the one less traveled by”. The narrator won’t know how his decision will affect his life until it has already changed it. Same thing goes to Christopher McCandless. When he wants to go “into the wilderness not primarily to ponder nature or the world at large but, rather, to explore the inner country of his own soul.” (page 183) He didn’t expect the resolution of his own path. However, he accepted his future and left a note; “I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE MAY GOD BLESS ALL!” (page 199). Lastly, these both literature shares same theme concepts of tragedy. For example, the narrator said “I took the one less traveled by” Because he took the one less traveled by, it could be considered that he probably had to deal with loneliness and alienation. Same goes to Christopher McCandless. When he accidently ate false potato seeds, he realized the “HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED”.(page 189) Eventually he died because of starvation.
Sammy's immaturity and lack of experience were largely to blame for his wrestling with conflicting roles in his transition from child to adult. Updike's protagonist was at the same time an imaginative, observant young man who stood by his convictions, defending the girls to the end. Sammy was perhaps more intelligent and more gutsy than one would like to give him credit for, however. He knew what he did not want out of life. On that Thursday afternoon in the A & P, his name game caught up with him. Quitting his job was to be a turning point for him, a time for him to confront his own issues of sexuality, social class, stereotyping, responsibility, and, on a deeper leve, authority.
Statutory rape laws are far from perfect. Statutory rape laws are discriminating towards boys and biased towards girls. No law should be gender specific especially one that consists of people who are endangering minors. These laws have discriminated boys for over 150 years. The law should be fair to both genders and give boys the voice the need in the cases. Over the years statutory rape cases have gone underreported, mainly because people do not witness the cases themselves. Most of the lost cases involve minor males and older females. Even though some cases have been reported they do not get as much publicity as the cases dealing with young girls and adult men. Boys should get the same amount of protection under the statutory rape laws as girls do; the young men are victims just as girls are.
Gun violence in Latin America is very high. The motive why gun violence is high in Latin America is because they lose hundreds of thousands due to organized crime. Latin America countries do not have powerful gun lobbies to keep them from passing laws to restrict access, but they lack effective law enforcement and suffer much higher crime levels than the U.S. does.
When working as an extra on the DeMille set, she met Frank O’ Conner, and they were married in 1929. Miss Rand never gave birth to any children, and when asked why, she replied that the “only...
Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan et al. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2007. 695-696. Print.
The Hunger games movie is a 2012 American science fiction adventure film directed by Gary Ross and based on the naval of the same name by Suzanne Collins. The picture is the first installment in the hunger games film series and was produced by Nina Jackabson and john kilik, with a screen play by Ross. Collis and Billy Ray. The film stars are Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci and Donald Sutherland.
The Road Not Taken is a twenty-line poem written in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme ABAAB. This poem starts with the author walking through the woods. He comes to a fork in the path and is torn by which path to take...does he take the path that is traveled by everybody, or the one rarely traveled upon? He decides to take the road less traveled by. By taking this path he changes his life in some way unknown to the reader.
In the poem, a person is walking along a path in an autumn forest in the early hours of the morning, when he stumbles upon a fork in the road. The speaker wishes that he would be able to travel down both of them, but he has places to go, and he does not have enough time. One is worn out from people walking along it so much, and the other is grassy and barely worn from fewer people walking on it. Although neither of them had been traveled on that day, as the leaves were still fresh on the ground, the speaker was compelled to travel the second or grassier path. The speaker fin...
Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken”. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7Th Ed. Nina
“The Road Not Taken” examines the struggles people run into when they come to a place in their life where a life altering decisions has to be made. The man who is described in this poem is traveling when he comes upon “two roads diverged” (1). He then has to choose which path he will take to continue on his journey. After standing at the diversion for a while, he knows he has to make a final decision. One path was worn down and “bent in the undergrowth” (5), so he took the other path, which was described as “perhaps the better claim/ Because it was grassy and wanted wear” (6-7). The man of the poem begins to ponder about a time when he will be telling his story of the path he took. Although we are not sure if the man regrets his decision or is relieved, he lets us know taking the road less traveled “has made all the difference” (20).
The overarching theme throughout the entire poem is that of choices. The concept of “two roads diverged,” or a split in the road, is a metaphor representing a choice which the narrator must make. Being “sorry [he] could not travel both… [being] one traveler” illustrates that, although he wishes he could see the results of both choices, as seen in saying he “looked as far as [he] could to where it bent,” he is but one pers...
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1. Frost, Robert. Robert Frost’s Poems. Ed. Louis Untermeyer. New York: Washington Square Press, 1968. 194.
The main theme of the poem that Frost attempts to convey is how important the decisions that one makes can be, and how they affect one’s future. In lines 2-3, he expresses the emotions of doubt and confusion by saying, “And sorry I could not travel/ And be one traveler, long I stood”, which explains how the speaker contemplated their decision of which road to take. In the closing, line 20 of the poem further reestablishes the theme when it states, “that has made all the difference”, meaning that making the decision of which road to take for themselves is the important key for a successful future. Frost helps to express this theme by using symbolism to portray a road as one’s journey of life. Using symbolism, Frost suggests that the speaker of this poem is taking the harder of the two roads presented before them, because the road the speaker chooses, “leaves no step had trodden black” (12...