“The Road Not Taken” By Robert Frost Robert Frost was born in 1874 and died in 1963. During his years of living Frost, wrote 105 poems including; The Road Not Taken, Mending Wall, Stars, and A Time to Talk (Best Famous Robert Frost Poems) and many more. While Frost was in his early and late twenties he attended school at Dartmouth University, only to return home and have unsatisfactory jobs, and Harvard University, where he had to drop out after two years due to health concerns. He married Elinor White on December 19, 1895, together they had four children but only two were able to live into adulthood. In 1912, Frost and Elinor decided to move their family to England, where Frost met Edward Thomas. It has been said, that Frost and Thomas would …show more content…
The speaker is at spot in the road where it is splitting, he can see that both paths are equally worn. The speaker then goes through a dilemma, where he doesn’t know which path is the better one to take, the speaker know that he has to pick one of them and there is no turning back once he (Frost Early Poems). How the reader interprets the speaker’s point of view is based on each stanza, the organization and form of the poem, and the use of a metaphor with the poem and the path of life. In the first stanza, the speaker creates an image in the reader’s mind by saying “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood” (Line 1). By saying the color yellow, the reader is now thinking it is probably Fall. The reader also knows the speaker is at a fork in the road, by the word diverged. As the reader continues on, they would learn that the speaker is sorry he cannot take both paths. At the conclusion of the stanza, the speaker looks down the one of the paths as far as he can see and notices there is a bend in the …show more content…
This poem is a lyric poem since the speaker isn’t telling a story or an observation the this is a lyric poem. The speaker is expressing his or her feelings and emotions. The rhyme scheme in the first stanza is ABAAB, in the second stanza it is CDCCD, in the third stanza the rhyme scheme is EFEEF, and in the last stanza it is GHGGH. Knowing the rhyme scheme of the poem helps the reader be able to stress the syllables that make the poem flow and sound
Robert Frost Robert Frost was born March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, California, where he lived the first eleven years of his life. After his father died, he moved with his sister and mother to Eastern Massachusetts near his grandparents. He started writing his first poems while he was in high school at Lawrence, where he also graduated as Valedictorian. Frost went to Dartmouth College in 1892. After college in 1895 he married a wonderful woman by the name Elinor Miriam White.
The central image that Frost presents, which is the path, provides a clear picture that the reader can focus on in order to reveal something about the poem. The “two roads diverged in a yellow wood'; vividly portray the fact that it is always difficult to make a decision because it is impossible not to wonder about the opportunity that will be missed out on. There is a strong sense of regret before the choice is even made and it lies in the knowledge that in one lifetime, it is impossible to travel down every path that one encounters. In an attempt to make a decision, the traveler "looks down one as far as I could." The road that will be chosen leads to the unknown, as does any choice in life. As much as he may strain his eyes to see how far the road stretches, eventually it surpasses his vision and he can never see where it is going to lead. It is the path that he chooses that sets him off on his journey and determines where he is going and what he will encounter.
The “yellow wood” and “grassy “path demonstrate the speakers zest for life. This spurs the sense of exploration and adventure in the readers. It creates a brighter, colorful view of life. The poem is set in autumn which is when trees shed their leaves and grow new ones, much like what the speaker wants to do. He wants to grow by taking risks and acting in response to his instincts.
Robert Frost, who happened to be one the top known American poets, was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California, to William Prescott Frost, Jr., and Isabelle Moodie. He later died at the age of 88, on January 29, 1963 in Boston, Massachusetts, US. Frost was not only an American poet, he was also a play writer. Even though he was known for his later association with rural life, Robert Frost grew up in the city, and published his first poem in his high school's magazine. Frost attended Dartmouth College for two months, which was long enough to be accepted into the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. After school, Frost returned home to teach and also to work at various jobs. Jobs which were including helping his mother teach her class of disorderly and disruptive boys, delivering newspapers, and working in a factory maintaining carbon arc lig...
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler” (Page 756 Stanza 1). This is the beginning of an iambic tetrameter by Robert Frost in which he expresses the thoughts of the speaker as they come to a fork in the road. The speaker faces a dilemma of deciding which path to take. Frost uses a closed form with a rhyme scheme of “ABAAB.” The speaker reaching the fork in the road is symbolism for a particular decision that he must make in life. The first stanza is setting up the situation in which the speaker must observe both choices and make a decision and stick with it. This poem allows the reader to use their imagination and is also relatable in everyone’s everyday lives. In “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost uses a good rhyme scheme, description, and symbolism to describe an important life decision as well as show the thoughts of the speaker as he makes this decision.
Many people while reading poems take the blunt force of what is being said word by word, but that is where people go wrong. Poetry is deep and meaningful pieces of literature making understanding poems very challenging for some people. The most misunderstood poem ever written would have to be Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” mainly because people seem to be individualized and not read into the irony Robert Frost is telling. Being able to go deeper into your own thoughts and thinking outside of the box to find the true meaning of what is being said is how you figure out what the authors are trying to say. What seems like a straight forward poem that we constantly hear people saying “take the road less traveled” really takes on a whole
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 ...
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.
Frost’s life was full of tragedies, yet he was still able to become an accomplished poet. According to Poets.org, Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco. When he was only 11 years old, Frost’s dad, William Prescott Frost, Jr, passed away. The death of his father caused his mother, Isabelle Moodie, to move her family to Massachusetts. Frost became interested in poetry in high school. His first published poem was “My Butterfly.” This poem was published in 1894 in a New York newspaper called The Independent (Poets.org).
The first stanza introduced the reader to the decision the author would have to make. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" to me signified that the result of his decision would arise from the same origin to which in my own life, I can reflect on. And though he would like to have seen the outcome of both paths, he knew he could only choose one. And to help him decide, he would look down both choices and see only until the road took a bend.
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 first stanza, which read, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood” (Frost 1), from my understanding it meant that he has reached at a crisscrossing point in his life, where he ends up seeing both roads, but is incapable of taking both roads at once. Therefore he must think quickly on which road he wants to take and how he will live his life by choosing that road. He is full of regret as he says “And sorry I could not travel both” (Frost 2), he is not sure how the road, which he didn’t choose, will affect him later in the future. He is helpless, all he can think of is what he’s going to miss if he chose the road he was taking over the other one. He is puzzled because he has never seen two roads coming up leaving him
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...
The speaker communicates many things in the first stanza of the poem. The first line, ?Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,? uses imagery with the color yellow, the color of gold, to show that the speaker sees an opportunity ahead of him. The two roads symbolizes the choices and consequences he must choose. The next line, ?And sorry I could not travel both,? illustrates how difficult it is to make a choice. It is impossible not to wonder what could happen by choosing the other road and what he could be missing out on. ?And being one traveler long I stood,? shows how the speaker would like to be in two places at once. Unable to accomplish this, he takes a long time to decide on what he should do. Finally, the speaker describes studying the first option, looking as far into the future as he possibly could with the lines, ?And looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth.?