Poetry Essay: Analyzing “The Road Not Taken”

Poetry Essay Thesis and Outline

Thesis Statement:

What does the narrator mean when he says that taking the road less traveled by has made all the difference when the roads seem to be the same throughout the poem?

Outline:

I. Introduction

• Summary of the poem.

II. The first five lines show the narrator observing the two roads he can choose from to take.

a. The two roads separated into the woods.

b. The narrator can only choose one road to travel upon.

c. The narrator looks down one road until he cannot see beyond the bend in the road as it goes into the woods.

III. In the second stanza, the narrator observes one of the roads.

a. He sees that it is just as fair of a road as the other one.

b. The narrator decides to take the road believing it to be a better outcome.

c. This road seemed to be grassy but worn as well.

IV. The narrator finally decides to take a road in the third stanza but in the fourth stanza, he declares that the road he took made all the difference.

a. The narrator picks a road and claims that he will come back to travel the other one another time.

b. He does not believe he will ever make it back to travel the other road since roads tend to lead to other roads to take along the journey.

V. Conclusion

a. The above writing proves that both of the roads are in the same condition as the other throughout the poem.

b. The narrator chose to take one road and will claim in his later years that the one he took was the one less traveled by because he had never traveled it until then and it sets up a story to tell everyone if he says he took the road less traveled by.

The poem “The Road Not Taken”, by Robert Frost has an interesting story to its creatively written lines. Briefly, the poem is about the nar...

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...eled it until then and it sets up a story to tell everyone if he says he took the road less traveled by (Frost’s Early Poems). One can better understand this if he were to look at this situation like choosing between two degrees to pursue in college. They both may have the same prerequisites and mostly the same classes within the major, but this choice sets the stage for the rest of his life and the story he will tell others and recollect down the road. Through this poem, one can see that Frost is trying to portray that one’s decisions count at the very beginning and will affect one’s life until the end.

References

Frost’s Early Poems. SparkNotes. Retrieved from http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/frost/section7.rhtml.

Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 7th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2013. 689. Print.