The Road Not Taken
In line one, Frost introduces the elements of his primary metaphor, the diverging roads. Lines two to three expresses the speaker's disappointment with his human limitations; he must make a choice. The choice is not easy, since "long I stood" before coming to a decision. Lines four and five examine the path as best the narrator can. However his vision is limited because the path bends and is covered over. These lines indicate that although the speaker would like to acquire more information, he is prevented from doing so because of the nature of his environment. In the following three lines, lines six through eight, the speaker indicates that the second path is a more attractive choice because it appears as though nobody has ventured down it recently. However, he remains ambivalent, since the traveled path is "just as fair.?Although the poet breaks for a new stanza after line 10, the comparison of the paths continues in lines nine through twelve. Here, the speaker states that the paths are "really about the same." Neither path has been traveled lately. Although he's searching for a clear logical reason to choose a single path, not one presents itself. In lines thirteen through fifteen, the speaker makes his decision. He tries to rationalize that he will be able to traverse both paths one day. However, he is quick to dismiss his hopes. Ending line thirteen, the exclamation point conveys excitement, but that excitement is quickly undercut by the admission contained in the following lines. In the final four lines, the only stanza beginning with a new sentence, the tone clearly shifts. The speaker imagines himself in the future, discussing his life. What he suggests, here, though, appears to contradict what he has said earlier. At the end of the poem, in the future, he will claim that the paths were different from each other and that he, courageous, did not choose the conventional one.
Frost's quarrel with the world is apparent in this poem. The speaker of this poem, presumable Frost himself, is forced to make a decision. Literally, he must choose a path in the woods. However, Frost's paths in the woods metaphorically describe the decisions that one must make in life. Frost is perturbed with the world because, like the speaker, he has to choose between two divergent paths. Each path appears to be suitable, yet, Fro...
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... done something or spoken a word that indicates who he really is, there is no turning back, in cannot be undone.
Once again at the end of the poem regret hangs over the traveler. He realizes that at the end of his life, somewhere ages and ages hence? he will have the regrets about having never gone back and traveling the road he did not take. Yet, he remains proud of his decision and recognizes that it was this path that he chose which helped him live the life he did. “I took the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference? To this man, the most important thing was that he did not have to follow the crowd and could stand independent and travel down the road he really wanted to. If he had not, he would not be the same man he is now.
There are many equally valid meanings to this poem and Robert Frost may have intended this. He may have been trying to achieve a universal meaning. In other words, there is no real moral to the poem. There is simply a narrator who makes a decision in his life that changed the direction of his life. It allows all readers from all different experiences to relate to the poem and encourages each to peruse his own dreams and individuality.
“Oh, I kept the first for another day!” Despite this wish he realizes he can never come back and take the untaken path because his choice will lead him in a different direction. He knows that “way leads on to way.” Realistically he doubts if he will ever come back because it is impossible to return to that place and make the same choice under similar circumstances because the original choice will have changed his life
Teen pregnancy is a big deal. We have seen our numbers of teen’s pregnant drop since 1991 but it is still a high number. Our numbers of teen pregnancy at times have been greater in number than other countries. We see teen pregnancy amongst people in all races, black, white, and Hispanic. Our babies are having babies. Teens are often not careful and have unprotected sex. They think they are mature enough to have sexual relations but in the end our mature enough to care for the consequences of having sex. “Low levels of parental education and income sharply increase the likelihood that a young women will become sexually active and have an unplanned child” (Macionis, 2015). That statement of research is very powerful, but not as powerful as this one, “Compared to young women who lives with both biological parents, those who live with a mother and a stepfather or in some other family arrangements have triple the odds of having a child by age nineteen” (Macionis, 2015). There are ways to prevent teen pregnancy from educating our children about ways of prevention, statistics/research, and simply just being involved with our children.
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.
Katya Hijazi is a main character in the novel Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris. Katya’s first name is Russian and she was named after her father’s childhood friend’s deceased wife who was a Russian emigrant. Katya is twenty-eight years old (120) and she was Othman’s fiancé (38). She lives with her father, Abu, who quit his job at a chemical plant and went into retirement after his wife, Katya’s mother, passed away (117).
What does the narrator mean when he says that taking the road less traveled by has made all the difference when the roads seem to be the same throughout the poem?
Robert Frost can be construed as an ambivalent author considering that the title of his poem seemingly contradicts the four stanzas to follow. It is difficult to determine if the title is a sign that the traveler in the poem regrets the decision about the road less traveled, or if the title has no effect whatsoever. If Frost is considering the roads to resemble the choices that are made in life and where they will lead, then the title could have no effect if the reader believes that destiny has already decided a path. Frost can describe the choices made in life of every person by just twenty lines of poetry since the context is very vague. The difficulty in understanding this poem allows every reader to relate the traveler's thought process to their own. Frost could even be writing a poem to describe an actual event that occurred in his life, and still the vagueness allows for a deeper explication. If the poem was direct and simply stated that the traveler regretted or rather wholly agreed with his path, not every reader could relate.
The structure, imagery, tension and ambiguity all add to the complexity and unification of the poem. Each add layers of thoughts and new information to the poem and signal to the reader that it is more than what one might originally have thought. The reader must take time to peel back each layer in order to truly begin to understand the poem. “The Road Not Taken” purposefully makes the reader decide which road the speaker took and where that road took him; it forces the reader to think critically. This poem was very successful in showing unification through its use of imagery, tension, ambiguity and structure and should be added to the Western Tradition.
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 female teen stares into the eyes of her newborn son, not realizing the type of life her and her son will have in the near future. Katrina L. Burchett excellently explicates teenage pregnancy among female adolescents living with domestic problems in her book titled Choices. The various elements that aid to the wide range of teenage pregnancies in the world should all be taken in to consideration. Getting pregnant at an adult is no longer substantial or conventional in our society. Everyday, female young adults are getting pregnant, which is why it is a social issue for the youth today.
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 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.
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.
“And sorry I could not travel both,”(line two), and that is because once you have made a decision and act upon it, you no longer can go back and change that decision. It becomes a decision you will have to live with every day of your life. You might think one day you can go back and travel the other road, but you know that will not happen. As he says, “Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how the way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.” (Line 13-15) He couldn't have said it better, as human's we all have a tendency to look back and wonder what would have happened if I had made a different decision. If I had said no to that choice that sent me to jail, how would I be living right now? The outcome of that decision is the reason I am living the way I do today. Robert Frost understood how people always look back and say what if I made a different decision and walked the other road. Even if you're still happy with the outcome of the road you went through, you can't help but satisfy your curiosity of the other road and ask yourself, what was on the road that I didn't
Bullying is a repeated harmful act that continues to affect millions of students every year. There is no stereotypical person that is a target for bullying; anyone can be its victim. There may not always be any signs of physical harm during these attacks, but our children always suffer emotional harm. Educating students, teachers and parents seems to be the only valid solution to this problem. There are many organizations that can educate the schools on this subject but for it to work people must care. Maybe one day, when enough people realize that this problem will not go away with out their help, we can eliminate bullying from our schools. In a perfect world there would be no bullying, but if you could ask Rachel Scott she would tell you we do not live in a perfect world, only a hopeful one.
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...