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Literary analyses in stopping by the woods on a snowy evening
The road not taken by robert frost symbolism and imagery
The road not taken by robert frost symbolism and imagery
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Poetry is a diverse and rich form of literature that allows one to openly express or leave underlying messages about any topic the author chooses. Poets have a variety of tools that act as multipliers, increasing the depth of the message the poet is expressing. Imagery and setting are often used most freely as the two have unlimited potential. Robert Frost capitalizes on that potential and is considered to be the one of the greatest American poets of all time. Frost implores the utilization of isolation and setting to give the reader a sense of personalized immersion. Frost’s use of setting in particular is most lucidly illustrated in his iconic works: “The Road not Taken”, “To E.T.” and “Stopping by woods on a Snowy Evening.” Juxtaposed with Frost’s typical rural settings, Frost, for the most part, grew up in the city. He graduated from Lawerence High School and went on to attend Dartmouth College. Frost reluctantly worked several jobs, including factory labor. However, it was not until 1912 would Frost begin writing his most successful literature. For …show more content…
Reiterating the point made before, “To E.T.” is a requiem in remembrance of Frost’s close friend Edward Thomas, and therefore the purpose of the poem is straight forward, to remember a fallen friend. Whereas “The Road not Taken” is a less personal poem and describes the choices before humans in society. One could take the same path as the majority or find a path not necessarily easy to traverse but can lead to great achievement (Lentricchia). Frost himself makes a reference to his own life in this poem, the path less traveled being living the life of a poem. Dissimilarly, “Stopping by woods on a Snowy Evening” is a poem of the human struggle. One might find it easier to stop the journey of life early and rest but one with strength will persevere through the ups and downs of life-“and miles to go before I sleep”
“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
Have you ever been faced with two important decisions? Life is full of options and when when you encounter two decisions you have to choose what path you are going to take. Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” represents two tough decisions and having to choose one and not the other. Robert Frost uses a few poetic devices, such as, metaphor, symbolism and vivid imagery to express and show the decisions we make in life. These poetic devices also help Robert Frost get his point across about the roads.
Robert Lee Frost began life in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. For an unknown reason, Frost believed for years that he was actually born in 1875. When Frost’s father died in 1885 his mother decided to move closer to her wealthy parents in Massachusetts. In California, Frost had dropped out of kindergarten after one day, and upon returning to the first grade, also dropped out. This was no deterrent on Frost to attend college. He was accepted to Harvard but instead attended Dartmouth because of his financial situation. Even though Frost found the school to be anything but challenging, he would not finish his time at Dartmouth, nor earn any formal degree in a school (Bengtsson). He once said of schooling that “Education is hanging around until you’ve caught on.” Interestingly enough, Robert Frost held several postions at credible schools, including Amherst and Harvard. Also, Frost was awarded an incredible amount of honorary degrees from Berkley to Yale (Parini 59). Frosts careers also ranged from editing for Henry Holt to raising poultry on his Derry, New Hampshire farm.
Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken, is a descriptive poem about a person’s conflict with the right path to take throughout life. The choice that this person makes can affect him forever. There are lots of choices like this throughout a person’s life that are made that piece together the future. What they do with these choices and the decisions they make are up to them. Although the narrator of this poem is faced with a dilemma, he still makes the best decision possible and takes the best road, which happens to be one that no one else has chosen to take.
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.
Every poet skillfully uses various forms of figurative language in order to illustrate their theme. Therefore, poetry should not be treated like a light, relaxing novel, but like a puzzle that needs to be completely broken apart and reconstructed to discover the deeper meaning. Analyzing diction, tone, and imagery are all important ways of understanding an author’s overall theme. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, which is a poem consisting four stanzas, takes place on a long path directly adjacent to a large forest on a dark, wintery evening. The speaker, who is riding horseback, pauses from his journey home to appreciate the beauty of the landscape that surrounds him. The gentle snow blanketing the land creates a very peaceful and serene tone and atmosphere for the opening stanza. However, the tone quickly changes after the little horse realizes that there are no farmhouses nearby. It eventually encourages the man to continue on the path, for he knows they have a long way to travel before they reach home. Frost utilizes
Robert Frost uses metaphor and symbolism extensively in ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’, developing deeper and more complex meanings from a superficially simple poem. Frost’s own analysis contributes greatly to our appreciation of the importance of metaphor, claiming that “metaphor [is] the whole of thinking,” inviting the reader to interpret the beautiful scene in a more profound way. However, the multitude of possible interpretations sees it being read as either carefully crafted lyric, a “suicide poem, [or] as recording a single autobiographical incident” . Judith Oster argues, therefore, that the social conditions individual to each reader tangibly alter our understanding of metaphor. Despite the simplicity of language, Frost uses conventional metaphors to explore complex ideas about life, death and nature. The uncertainty, even in the concluding stanza, that encompasses the poem only adds to the depth of possible readings.
In Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken” there are many complexities that ultimately lead to the poem’s unity. At first glance this poem seems to be a very typical coming of age poem where the speaker has come to a major fork in the road and he must decide which path to take. At first glance this would be a very good statement to make; however, as the reader digs deeper and searches for the complexity and the nuances of the poem the original assessment seems to be shallow and underdeveloped. In order to truly appreciate this poem as a work of art, the reader must search for the unity and complexity within it, otherwise this poetic work of art will go by unnoticed and cast off as a coming of age poem and nothing else.
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)
When he was ten years old, his father died. After that, Frost and his mother moved to New England. Frost attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University, but did not get a degree from either school. Later on in his life he taught at Pinkerton Academy and he also taught at the Plymouth Normal School for one year. At this time in his life, he decides to live a worry-free life and move out of New England.
The Great In and Out Doors: An Analysis of Robert Frost’s Use of Natural and Rural Depictions in his Poetry. Edward Abbey once stated: “Water, water, water.. There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount, a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.” Through poems such as Birches, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Mending Wall, Out, Out--, Acquainted with the Night, and The Gift Outright Frost uses an amazing capacity of human intellect to personify the areas of living.
Robert Frost was born to an editor for a father, and a member of the Swedenborgian church. His father started as a teacher, and then became the editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin. Isabelle Moodie, his mother, baptized him with the Swedenborgian church. Later on in Frost’s life, he left this church. Frost was born in San Francisco (“Biography of Robert Frost”, poemhunter.com). In 1994, be published his first poem, “The Butterfly: An Elegy,” on November 8, 1894 at age 20. He published this work in the New York newspaper Frost was a unique poet in the way that he stood in between the nineteenth-century poetry, and modern poetry. James M. Cox said that, “Though his career fully spans the modern period and though it is impossible to speak of him as anything other than a modern poet, it is difficult to place him in the main tradition of modern poetry,” (“Robert Frost”, poetryfoundation.org).
One of Robert Frost’s most well known poems is The Road Not Taken. Frost had mentioned numerous times that it was a “tricky- very tricky” poem (Grimes). This can be examined in the structure of the poem, the symbolism, and the diction. The simple language he uses in the poem reveals the common relevance of the poem to the people. People have to go about making choices each and every day of their lives. However, sometimes we come to a cross-road in our lives that can be life changing that is what the sentence structure reveals to us (Mcintyre). He uses common words but in a way that is unclear to the reader. For example the opening line of the poem is “two roads diverged in a yellow wood” (Frost, Robert. “1.”). The reader is not sure what is meant by yellow woods. It may mean the onset of fall or even the coming of spring. The season could relate to the speakers stage in life. It may mean this is their youth and they have to make a decision that will plan out the rest of their life, such as I am about what college to attend. Or is it indicating he has reached his mid-life, the fall, and is now presented with opportunity to change his...
Frost was a rural Yankee whose writings reflect everyday experiences-his own experiences, but was one who saw metaphorical dimensions in the everyday things he encountered. These everyday encounters held ground as his subject manner, combined with the rural setting of New England nature, seasons, weather and times of day. Frost’s goal was to write his poetry in such a way that it would cover familiar ground, but in an unfamiliar way or uncommon in expression.
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...