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Critical analysis of the road taken by robert frost
What is significant about the road not taken
Literary analysis of robert frost's the road not taken
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The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
In his poem "The Road Not Taken" Frost's theme is about how the choices one makes affect life. When we come to a fork in the road, a decision needs to be made. Both paths are different and choosing the right one – if there is a right one – will depend on where we have been. Each choice that we make plays out differently in our lives. We can look back and wonder what would have happened if we choose differently. But that is outweighed in what we would have missed. Each choice affects who we are, where we are going, and moreover our lives.
The persona had two roads to chose from and wonders what would have happened had he taken the other road. Frost’s title reflects this. The first three lines, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / And sorry I could not travel both /And be one traveler, long I stood", tell us the speaker must choose between two roads he finds equally appealing. It is apparent the narrator has a difficult choice to make and is carefully considering his options.
In the first stanza, the emphasis is on the road that was...
“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost shows the reader how the choices they make will be hard decisions and will follow them. The setting of this poem takes place in the woods, in the fall. The woods will typically be a quiet and serene place making the setting an ideal place for decision making. The setting also helps to show the symbolism that Frost shows by describing the two paths. Frost uses pathos when appealing to the reader’s feelings because any reader has had to make a decision in their life. Creating this symbol helps to relate to the reader. The Imagery that is created helps to make the reader feel as if they are standing in the snowy woods, looking down two paths, and trying to make the decision of which one to take. Frost used
The Road Less Traveled by Robert Frost Robert Frost's poem "The Road Less Traveled" amazingly first written was not intended to convey certain aspects of what it is now interpreted as. Life is a road with different paths. Taking one path over another forever changes the course of ones life for the good or bad.
Frost realizes that had he taken the other road he would not be where he is today. He was adventurous and choose the road that had been traveled the least recently and that one decision changed his life
Life has many roads you can take and it’s which ones you choose to follow that will shape your future forever. That is what I always take from this great Frost poem. He sees two roads both being equally appealing, but selects the one less traveled and how it makes his life unique. This poem is one of few that I do care for myself. It shows a man whose come to a point in his life where he has to decide what he will do with it. This is a point in our lives that everyone will come to and a somewhat difficult challenge for many. We have the many options ahead of us and must try and look ahead to what will come to decide our future. “And be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could.” I think this was a time in Frost’s life when he had just moved to London and was looking back at the choices he had made. He quit trying the Derry farm and sold it and moved to London to write. This was an awfully risky thing to do at this point with a wife and kids, but it shows his approval in retrospect. “Then took the other, just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear.” This shows that he choose a path that many choose to not to. He selected a harder path in life that could have been a devastating mistake given his situation in life.
Robert Frost is one of the most known poets to write poetry. He’s always been known to express his feelings in his work. One of Frosts’ most famous poems that made it into Times Magazine is “The Road Not Taken.” That poem specifically centers the on the ideas of choices. The fact that Robert Frosts’ poems express his feeling shows why he was a part of the twentieth century. The way that he wrote his poems took a person with a creative mind who could imagine things beyond its words, to understand them. Literary elements are what make poems, and Frost used a lot of those. Not all the time will someone find poems relative to real life situations, but “The Road Not Taken” is. The title of this poem kind of tells what the poem will be about, but once you begin reading it you notice that Frost uses imagery for you to get the idea. He does not just throw it at you from the jump.
We all have had a time in our lives when everything is going swell. But, what about the times in our lives when everything is broken, shattered, turned to ash. One must decide to fight or flight. I decided to fight my way back to being a whole human and bring peace back to my life. Without the literary device of poetry and lyric, I might as well not be here today. The pieces, “words Hurt”, “You and I”, “Caraphernelia,” “Dead and Buried”, and, “the road not taken”, have had a great impact on my life.
Frost uses the idea of “The Road Not Taken” as an example of the paths that most people in life do not take but some decide to not follow the pack. We instantly recognize that this poem is going to be about life choices and that we do not necessarily know what the outcome of taking that path will be. He also uses the tone of the poem to deliver the meaning of the poem just like Silverstein. He uses tone by giving the reader an idea that the character will in the future question his choices because he will have to go through the uncommonly taken path (life) alone. Overall, the poem uses similar literary devices to instill the main theme of life into the
In Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”, Frost shows the everyday human struggle to make a choice that could change the course of one’s life. In his poem, a person has the choice to take one road or the other. One road is worn out from many people taking it, and the other is barely touched, for fewer have taken that road. Throughout the poem, the speaker learns that just because so many other people have done one thing, or walked one way, does not mean everyone has to. Sometimes you just have to go your own way.
David Wyatt writes, "Nowhere in Frost is the tension between surprise and anticipation, wayward experience and the form into which it is cast or forecast, more acute than in 'The Road Not Taken'" (129). As the poem is read, one cannot help but be pulled into the questions of which road will be chosen, how they differ, and what will become of the traveler. Perhaps some hope to find guidance for their own journeys by seeking answers in Frost's work. According to Michael Meyer, "The speaker's reflections about his choice are as central to an understanding of the poem as the choice itself." (97) Frost himself admits, "it's a tricky poem, very tricky." (Pack 10)
On the surface, Robert Frost’s poem is a story about a walk on a wooded road, but it had deeper meaning to him and how he feels about "the road." Also, the poem has a universal meaning about life and the choices it presents. Further, the poem is magnificently written in Frost’s own created rhyme style. Lastly, a sigh might just be a sigh to some, but in this piece it means much more to Frost. Frost’s 1916 poem "The Road Not Taken" is an example of how Frost writes poetry enthralling the reader with a grand opening and an unexpected ending that must be thoroughly analyzed.
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.
Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” show the readers similar struggles of life. “The Road Not Taken” is about taking control of one’s life and living it aside from how others live theirs. While “Stopping by Woods on Snowy Evening” shows the desire for rest. Sometimes people regret the possibilities of the road not chosen, sometimes people feel proud about the road that they
Frost uses several literary devices in this brief account, such as imagery, personification, metaphor, and alliteration. Descriptions of “yellow wood,” depicting an autumn forest, and “no step [in the leaves being] trodden black,” indicating a fresh and natural recently untrodden environment, are included to create a picture in the reader’s mind and make the situation ore real and easily related to. It is possible that Frost may have purposely used the word “yellow” to imply the splitting paths. ("Cummings Study Guides") When describing the two paths, the narrator mentions that one “was grassy and wanted wear,” using personification to make it seem as if that path is calling to him to travel upon it. In the same phrase, Frost also makes use of alliteration to draw attention to the calling of the first path. ("Use of Literary Devices in Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken")
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...