Robert Frost was one of America's greatest poets. From 1874 - 1963 he
has written many famous poems including "Nothing Gold can stay" and
"The Road not taken" which I will be writing about. He lived in San
Francisco and sadly died in Boston in 1963. He moved to Massachusetts
when he was eleven and went to the local high school. He then
continues to go to Dartmouth College.
The Road Not Taken is a poem about decisions in life and how each one
leads onto another road, spreading into a vast complexity of
situations and life. The roads symbolise decisions and how each
decision effects the whole journey ahead of him.
The first verse is about his first decision in the network of roads
that he could have taken. He ponders which road to follow and wonders
what the consequences of each road could lead to. He tries to look
into the future by peering down the road to where it makes a turn!
The first line, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" means that he
has to walk down one of two roads leading in opposite directions and
the yellow wood could be a screen blocking his vision into the future
of his choice. In the second line, " And sorry I could not travel
both", means that he wished he could have chosen both to compare each
road to the other road and choose the one he preferred. However, he
could not do this because once he had chosen one path, he could not
retrace his footsteps and tread the other path. The third line, "And
be one traveller, long I stood", means that he took a long time and
had thought a lot about which road to enter. By him being a traveller
it means that he is just one more person who has to make this
decision. He has to travel through a network of randomly generated
decisions, and to...
... middle of paper ...
...ing gold can stay" is
saying that nothing beautiful lasts. I personally agree with this
statement as it applies to all things in today's modern society.
Nothing good will ever last. We will all die one day and anything good
we did have will be gone.
I really enjoyed studying these poems because they all related to life
and how life works. They have a similar style and at first I did not
have a clue what was being told. Once you look at the poems in more
depth though, you can see the points they are trying to get across. I
would not recommend these poems to anyone though, because people might
find them boring as I did from the beginning.
Putting both poems side by side, I can say that I enjoyed studying
"Nothing gold can stay" more than the other because I understood the
issues more clearly and I liked the way Robert Frost put the seasons
into a poem.
Robert Frost is an iconic poet. One of his most well-known poem is titled “The Road Not Taken”. This poem is about the narrator monologue about his travels and choices he faced. It opens up with the view with a fork in the road where two roads take different routes. The narrator must choose which road he will take. The narrator describes his setting vividly of the woods that he is traveling in and the choices he must make, such as “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back.” (14-15). The roads are not only literal choices, but also figurative choices. As they represent all life choices one must make in their lifetime. Frost uses multiple elements within his poem to bring the meaning of it to the reader’s attention. This poem is a metaphor for the choices people must make in their lives and how those choices impact their lives forever.
Decisions are an everyday part of life. Although many decisions made throughout the day may not be crucial to our path of life, most every decision will affect life in some way. Pop tart or bagel, milk or orange juice, as well as drive or take the bus are all choices people make to begin their day, but Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” is a perfect example of a life altering decision. Frost wrote this poem when his dear friend, Edward Thomas, was stuck between staying with Frost and becoming a poet, or going to war against Germany in World War I. “Two Roads”, later changed to “The Road Not Taken”, angered Thomas, and caused him to enlist in the war, only to be killed in action two months later at Arras on Easter Day. "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost has a literal meaning from the speaker, or traveler, of the road he did not take, but the deeper meaning certainly shows how decisions alter your life.
Poetry is a form of art in which an exclusive arrangement and choice of words help bring about a desired emotional effect. Robert Frost said that a poem is formed when “an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” His popular poem, "The Road Not Taken," like any other poem, has as many interpretations as it has readers. Using rhetorical analysis, one can break down the meaning(s) of this seemingly simple poem.
“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 first line in "The Road Not Taken" is "two roads diverged in a yellow wood” (Frost 1). This gives the reader right off of two separate choices that the traveler can choose. The second line is "and sorry I could not travel both” (frost 2). This lets the reader know that in fact the traveler did choose one path. Just by reading the first two lines the reader can already feel the tone of being decisive. Throughout the poem it gives great descriptions as the travel compares to two paths. An example of this one would be line 8, "Because it was grassy and wanted wear". This statement also lets the reader know that the traveler already knew which one to pick by the looks of the road, thus road being the less traveled upon. At the end of the poem, the line 19 &20 lets us know the traveler has made a decision. Though in the traveler’s words one can almost sense sadness. The traveler explains that one day he would like to go back and travel the other path.
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.
The Road Not Taken is a twenty-line poem written in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme ABAAB. This poem starts with the author walking through the woods. He comes to a fork in the path and is torn by which path to take...does he take the path that is traveled by everybody, or the one rarely traveled upon? He decides to take the road less traveled by. By taking this path he changes his life in some way unknown to the reader.
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.
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.
Above all, 'The Road Not Taken'; can truly be interpreted through much symbolism as a clear-sighted representation of two fair choices. The two roads in the poem, although, 'diverging,'; lead in different directions. At the beginning they appear to be somewhat similar, but is apparent that miles away they will grow farther and farther away from each other. Similar to many choices faced in life. It is impossible to foresee the consequences of most major decisions we make and it is often necessary to make these decisions based on a little more than examining which choice 'wanted wear.'; In
“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).
Perhaps one of the most well-known poems in modern America is a work by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken. This poem consists of four stanzas that depict the story of the narrator traveling through the woods early in the morning and coming upon a fork in the path, where he milled about for a while before deciding upon one of the two paths, wishing he could take both, but knowing otherwise, seeing himself telling of this experience in the future.
In the poem, “The Road Not Taken”, the speaker has to make a big decision in his life. This poem talks about a person who comes across an intersection or a fork in the road and he has to choose which way to follow. The road is a metaphor of the choices we make in life. As the speaker ponders his choices, he feels strongly that whatever “road” he takes will be for good. So he must weigh his decision well in order to come up with the best choice and not end up regretting it. The speaker considers his thought wisely. He says, “And looked down as far as I could / To where it bent in the undergrowth”, by giving it a proper thought he weighs his choices well and in the end, chooses to follow the road “less traveled”. “The Road Not Taken” signifies a difficult choice in a person’s life that could offer him an easy or hard way out. There is no assurance of what lies ahead; if there will be success or sorrows. But a person has to take risk making up his mind about which way to choose because this is the first step of head...
In the poem “The Road Not Taken”, author Robert Frost uses the simple image of a road to represent a person’s journey through life. A well-established poet, Frost does a proficient job of transforming a seemingly common road to one of great importance, which along the way helps one identify who they really are. This poem is one of self-discovery. Frost incorporates strong elements of poetry such as theme, symbolism, rhyme scheme, diction, imagery, and tone to help create one of his most well known pieces about the human experience.
There are many choices that one needs to make on a daily basis to simply get through the day. Life choices however are more important and have an everlasting effect on the individual. They are less frequent but have more of an impact on one’s life. The writer Robert Frost chose to use the poem “The Road not Taken” to show how one’s decisions can change the outcome of your life. Frost used the details of picking the road, the inability to reverse his choice, the consequences of his judgment, along with the external factors that influenced his judgments to express to the readers how life’s decisions make a difference all by writing a poem.