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Ambiguity in the road not taken by robert frost
‘The Road Not Taken’
The road not taken poetry analysis
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Robert Frost’s 1916 poem The Road Not Taken is one of the most influential pieces of literature in American history. Since its publication, the poem has been subjected to much misconstrued analysis, which has led to its being stereotyped as a poem about following the speakers instinct. Ultimately we are made to believe that choosing the right, less traveled “road” in life leads to a better future; however, this theory is contradicted in the poem’s own lines. The popularity of The Road Not Taken is due almost entirely to this false understanding. This iconic poem has been used in advertisements for Mentos, Nicorette, AIG, and even the job-search web site Monster.com. The lines have been borrowed by singers and songwriters including Bruce Hornsby, …show more content…
This conclusion, however, does not make sense when we look at what the protagonist told us earlier in the poem- neither path is more traveled than the other. Frost seems, instead, to allude to the psychological struggle inherent in decision-making. Eventually, a choice is made, and because the two roads are identical, the narrator picks one, and tells himself that one day he will come back and choose the other, just to see what could have been. While it was made clear that both roads were the same, the narrator fools himself into thinking they were not. Despite the beginning of the poem, it isn’t wholly clear if in the end the narrator sighs out of contentment, or regret. Poetry is, if nothing else, open to …show more content…
The speaker is “telling this with a sigh.” In the poem’s final stanza, he broods over the path he chose not to follow, rather than taking full advantage of the path he did follow. Jay Parini, Frost biographer, suggests: “My guess is that Frost, the wily ironist, is saying something like this: ‘When I am old, like all old men, I shall make a myth of my life. I shall pretend, as we all do, that I took the less traveled road. But I shall be lying.’”(Joseph Bathanti ncartseveryday.org) “I am not a nature poet. There is almost always a person in my poems,” Robert Frost famously said. He saw how prone his dark, ironic, and complex poems were to misinterpretation. Frost didn't take the high road or blaze his own trail, he chose between two very similar courses of action and his decision itself is what “made all the difference.” We all face seemingly unimportant decisions every day which alter the course of our lives from that point onward. Sometimes, we can save the alternate path for another day, but eventually, as Frost points out, time goes on and we leave those choices behind us
The poem is set in the fall when the leaves are changing colors and beginning to cover the ground. The speaker of the poem is faced with an unfamiliar fork in the road and is forced to decide which direction he or she must go. As the speaker is deliberating, he is “sorry” he cannot just travel both and it appears to be because the speaker has a fear of picking the wrong one (Frost 2). Although he “looked down one as far as I could” there was no seeing the end (4). Just like in a life, it is possible to have an idea of what will happen and there is no telling which choices will turn out beneficial and which will not. The speaker knows that although the paths are similar the outcome of picking the wrong one could be life changing. Even though he is upset he must trust in himself to know which one would be best for him in the long run.
Everyone is a traveler, carefully choosing which roads to follow on the map of life. There is never a straight path that leaves one with but a single direction in which to head. Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken'; can be interpreted in many different ways. The shade of light in which the reader sees the poem depends upon her past, present, and the attitude with which she looks toward her future. In any case however, this poem clearly demonstrates Frost’s belief that it is the road that one chooses that makes him the man he is.
Robert Frost’s controversial poem “The Road Not Taken” leaves us with a lot to think about, and in a state of mixed feelings. But what he has made undisputable is that in life there will be many crossroads and the choice to “take the road less traveled by” isn’t always the easiest one, and maybe it isn’t the best one either, but the most important thing is that you always, always do what you think is best and persevere through it, because after all, the choices made by others won’t matter. What counts is the decision you made and that at the end of the road when you think back you don’t regret it or wish you would’ve done it differently.
The ambiguity which dominates the poem seems to be intentional. The only certainty in the poem is that it deals with a solitary traveler who has come to a fork in the road and must choose which way to go.
In “The Road Not Taken” Frost emphasizes that every person is a traveler choosing the roads to follow on the map of their continuous journey-life. There is never a straight path that leads a person one sole direction in which to head. Regardless of the original message that Robert Frost had intended to convey, “The Road Not Taken” has left me with many different interpretations. Throughout this poem, it is obvious that decisions are not easy to make and each decision will lead you down a different path.
In the opening stanza, Frost describes coming to a point during a walk along a rural road that diverges into two separate, yet similar paths. The narrator finds that he ...
He analyzes both paths and comes to the conclusion that both are well-traveled. After choosing one of the roads, he tells himself that he would come back one day and take the other road. He realizes that this most likely would never happen, that he would never come upon this same fork in the road because his choice will lead him to other forks in the road. The poem is ended by the narrator wondering how things would be different if he had chosen the other road. I selected this poem because it reflects the meaning of real life situations.
This poem by Robert Frost was first read to me in the last year of my high school experience. Back then, not only did I have absolutely no interest in any literary work, but moreover, had no intension to lye there and analyze a poem into its symbolic definitions. Only now have I been taught the proper way to read a literary work as a formalistic critic might read. With this new approach to literature I can understand the underlying meaning to Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken". In addition to merely grasping the author's intension, I was able to justly incur that this poem, without directly mentioning anything about life's decisions, is in its entirety about just that.
The two roads presented in this poem represent difficult decisions we are faced with in life. He uses the relationship between the paths and real life decisions throughout the whole poem. This is an example of extended metaphor, which is used to help the readers understand the analogy between the two. The man in the poem said: “long I stood” (3), which lets us know the decision was not made instantly. It was hard for the man to make a final judgment.
In the poem, “The Road Not Taken”, the speaker has to make a big decision in his life. This poem talks about a person who comes across an intersection or a fork in the road and he has to choose which way to follow. The road is a metaphor of the choices we make in life. As the speaker ponders his choices, he feels strongly that whatever “road” he takes will be for good. So he must weigh his decision well in order to come up with the best choice and not end up regretting it. The speaker considers his thought wisely. He says, “And looked down as far as I could / To where it bent in the undergrowth”, by giving it a proper thought he weighs his choices well and in the end, chooses to follow the road “less traveled”. “The Road Not Taken” signifies a difficult choice in a person’s life that could offer him an easy or hard way out. There is no assurance of what lies ahead; if there will be success or sorrows. But a person has to take risk making up his mind about which way to choose because this is the first step of head...
Above all, 'The Road Not Taken'; can truly be interpreted through much symbolism as a clear-sighted representation of two fair choices. The two roads in the poem, although, 'diverging,'; lead in different directions. At the beginning they appear to be somewhat similar, but is apparent that miles away they will grow farther and farther away from each other. Similar to many choices faced in life. It is impossible to foresee the consequences of most major decisions we make and it is often necessary to make these decisions based on a little more than examining which choice 'wanted wear.'; In
At first, I didn’t comprehend the figurative meaning behind the line and interpreted the line literally. I thought the speaker would actually sigh before he told the story. After I re-read the poem a couple of times, I understood that the speaker may not actually sigh, but will want to, because of the remorse and regret the speaker continues to feel, even years after the decision is made. I also really enjoyed the theme of the poem, which is to “seize the day”. The poem encourages the reader to make decisions from their own opinions, not from the crowd.
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...
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...
This poem is one of many written by Frost in 1916 and it is commonly used in high school writing classes. It has been written about frequently and often analyzed because of the connection people feel to the poem for the reason that everyone has to make life choices. The reading of the poem touches a wide variety of readers because each one can identify with the writers predicament of having to make a choice, with two different options, as in the poem which road to take either the well-traveled path or as he decides the less journeyed. As an outcome of this choice, the writer states, that his life was profoundly different than it would have been had he taken the other road. The other road the more traveled and seemingly the safer of the two makes the reader seem more fearless to except what the unknown has to offer thus making his own way in the world. In reading further the roads are almost the same both being beautiful and equally passable. The writer tries to explain why things happened the way they did and that is a significant moment in his life. One might pick the road that gets them to w...