One of the most interesting things about Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” is how Frost meant for his poem to be taken as a satire of his friend, Edward Thomas, but instead was taken at face value and as a metaphor for the choices we make in life ( Orr 1). The poem itself, is a about a traveler at a cross roads. The traveler looks at one and then looks at the other describing it as, “as just as fair.” The speaker then contradicts himself in the next line by saying the second path, “perhaps having the better claim.” The poem ends with the speaker taking the path less traveled saying, “that has made all the difference.” The speaker in the poem has a regretful tone, which allows readers to connect this to Frost’s real life experiences. However, Frost intended the reader to focus on the speaker’s regretful tone, to show it was a satire of Edward Thomas’s indecisiveness. The Poem is written in four stanzas with five lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABAAB throughout the entire poem. The meter is loose iambic meter, however most of the …show more content…
The roads have “no step had trodden black,” meaning that the speaker is the first one to travel on the path. The speaker then says, “Oh, I kept the first for another day!” This shows the speaker’s indecisiveness because it shows he thinks he can take the other path if the second one does not work out. However, once on the path the speaker realizes he will most likely never return back. The last stanza starts with “I shall be telling this with a sigh.” This shows a regretful tone of the speaker. The speaker then says “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- / I took the one less traveled by.” However, this line directly contradicts stanza two, when the speaker said the two roads “Had worn them really about the same.” The final line of the speaker is the most famous of the poem, it ends with “And that has made all the
His outside actions of touching the wall and looking at all the names are causing him to react internally. He is remembering the past and is attempting to suppress the emotions that are rising within him. The first two lines of the poem set the mood of fear and gloom which is constant throughout the remainder of the poem. The word choice of "black" to describe the speaker's face can convey several messages (502). The most obvious meaning ... ...
The poem says that "since feeling is first" (line 1) the one who pays attention to the meaning of things will never truly embrace. The poem states that it is better to be a fool, or to live by emotions while one is young. The narrator declares that his "blood approves" (line 7) showing that his heart approves of living by feeling, and that the fate of feeling enjoyment is better than one of "wisdom" (line 9) or learning. He tells his "lady" (line 10) not to cry, showing that he is speaking to her. He believes that she can make him feel better than anything he could think of, because her "eyelids" (line 12) say that they are "for each other" (line 13). Then, after all she's said and thought, his "lady" forgets the seriousness of thought and leans into the narrator's arms because life is not a "paragraph" (line 15), meaning that life is brief. The last line in the poem is a statement which means that death is no small thi...
Use of Irony in The Road Not Taken "The Road Not Taken," perhaps the most famous example of Frost’s own claims to conscious irony and "the best example in all of American poetry of a wolf in sheep's clothing." Thompson documents the ironic impulse that produced the poem as Frost's "gently teasing" response to his good friend, Edward Thomas, who would in their walks together take Frost down one path and then regret not having taken a better direction. According to Thompson, Frost assumes the mask of his friend, taking his voice and his posture, including the un-Frostian sounding line, "I shall be telling this with a sigh," to poke fun at Thomas's vacillations; Frost ever after, according to Thompson, tried to bring audiences to the ironic point, warning one group, "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem - very tricky" (Letters xiv-xv). Thompson's critical evaluation is simply that Frost had, in that particular poem, "carried himself and his ironies too subtly," so that the poem is, in effect, a failure (Letters xv). Yet is it simply that - a too exact parody of a mediocre poetic voice, which becomes among the sentimental masses, ironically, one of the most popularly beloved of Frost's "wise" poems?
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...
Poetry requires comprehension and timely analyzation. A poem may convey something completely different after it has been broken down, piece by piece, and read more clearly. In poetry, length is not equivalent to substance. Therefore, a poem can range any where from a few lines to a few pages. Author’s often use literary devices to further communicate their message to the reader. In order to fully comprehend Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken” one must understand how the use of irony aids in communicating the main theme.
Although the poet breaks after line ten, the main idea continues into the third stanza, creating a link between these parts of the poem. Here the speaker states that the paths are "really about the same."(10). Neither path has recently been traveled, although he is searching for a clear, logical reason to decide one path over the other, however, he cannot find a suitable reason. Lines 13 -- 15 the traveler makes his decision...
Robert Frost wrote for the reader to ponder about small choices made and the impact that these choices have later on in life. Written by Robert Frost, the narrative poem “The Road Not Taken” explores the topic of choices. Beginning with a traveler coming upon a fork in a road, the speaker and attempts to decide which path to take. At the end of the poem, after the reader uncovers the truth that the speaker is actually deciding what choice to make. At the end of the poem the speaker explains that the choice that they made after coming upon the fork in the road has made all the difference in the speaker’s life.
“The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost, is one of the most famous and recognized poems, however, it is also one of the most misinterpreted poems. The poem’s most familiar lines are the last few, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference” (18-20). These powerful lines that have made the poem so popular make it very easy for a reader to believe that Frost’s intention is to motivate his audience to be different and to deviate from the majority, however, a deeper look at the text reveals otherwise. A quick glance the poem leads the reader to believe that the narrator took a path that isn’t chosen very often, but the text reveals that both paths are actually very similar.
But upon further examination, Frost says that one road has “perhaps the better claim / Because it was grassy and wanted wear” (7-8). The narrator, who is unsure “if [they] shall ever come back” (15) chooses the path “less traveled by / And that [made] all the difference” (19-20). Many people, students and teachers alike, are stumped by majority of this poem. Eisiminger taught this poem, and a student of his asked, "How can there be a less traveled road…if both roads are worn 'really about the same?" (183).
An abundance of imagery is used throughout “The Road Not Taken” to captivate a scenic process upon making the right choice. The opening line of them poem dives right in to create a vivid image in the reader’s mind by saying “two roads diverged in yellow wood” which depicts fall time where the leaves have turned yellow. This is further painted where the roads “equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black,” conveying that it’s towards the end of fall when the leaves have already left their branches, but not too late since the leaves seem to be unworn and freshly spread across the ground. It also portrays that the paths are seldom traveled on.
“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).
Also "Both that morning equally lay/ In leaves no step had trodden black" ( lines 11 and 12). This additionally tells how the roads are equally worn and equally laid with un- trodden leaves. The poet means that the roads were not traveled by many people. The poet decide to choose the one which was less
“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is a poem whose literary meanings were lost with the passing of time, leaving it a rather tricky poem to decipher. In and of itself, it is a poem about life and the choices we make that affect us daily. Be it a choice made with regrets, or none whatsoever, later on we will turn back on that moment and wonder what could be different had we not made the choice we did at that point in time. “I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by,
"The Road Not Taken Theme of Dreams, Hopes, and Plans." Shmoop: Study Guides & Teacher Resources. Shmoop University, Inc. Web. 03 Apr. 2011. .
Why does the choice of roads in “The Road Not Taken” makes so much difference to the speaker years later? What might the two roads represent?