The Road Not Taken: Depiction of Three Ages
In his Explicator article, “Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken,’” William George suggests that the poem includes “three distinct ages” of the narrator and focuses on the choices that this person must make at the different stages of his life (230). George differentiates the primary speaker of the poem, what he calls the “middle-aged self,” from the younger and older versions, noting that the middle-aged version mocks the other two by taking a more objective stance towards his decision. The younger and older versions “are given to emotion, self-deception, and self-congratulation, and both face a decision which the middle-aged speaker sees with more objective eyes than do his younger and older selves” (230). George demonstrates that, while the middle-aged self is able to view his other selves objectively without delusion and self-aggrandizement, the younger and older selves are incapable of this kind of objectivity in their decision-making.
George’s analysis is broken into two parts; the first part is an analysis of the relationship between the middle-aged self and the younger self, while the second part is an analysis of the relationship between the middle-aged self and the older self. In the first part of the article, George suggests that the younger self is faced with choosing between two roads, paths that the middle-aged self understands are very similar; the younger self, however, refuses to accept their equal value and instead deludes himself with the idea of having chosen a less traveled path (230-31). In the second part of the article, George describes how the older self is faced with choosing between telling the truth about his decision as a youth or lying about it; while the middle-aged self fully recognizes that the choice of the past was not grand, the older self chooses to cover over this truth through deception and self-aggrandizement (231).
Robert Frost, author of “The Road Not Taken” and many other renowned poems, was born on March 26, 1874 in the city San Francisco. Frost attended Lawrence High School, where he met his future wife, Elinor White. Frost married Elinor on December 19, 1985 and had their first child, Elliot, in 1896. He attended Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire in 1892 and then transferred to Harvard University in Boston. He ended up dropping out after two years due to health concerns, never earning a formal degree. In 1900, Frost and his family moved to New Hampshire; Frost wanted to start farming. However, this did not work out for him; he felt that his true calling was writing poetry . In 1912, Frost is faced with an important decision; he decided
Choices in life can be as simple as deciding where to go out to eat or what to wear and as difficult as deciding which college to enroll in and who to marry. The most strenuous part is not knowing if you made the right decision because even the simplest choices can shape the future. There are no guarantees in life so every decision counts. Second guessing is as natural to humans as breathing, which makes the decision making process that much harder because it is more than just picking something and sticking with it, there is always the curiosity of what if? Even when faced with the most difficult decisions one must live with the choices they have made, which is very similar to what the speaker of “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is forced to deal with.
...ion. Dante cites now-historical and mythological figures to exemplify the sins and to make for the better understanding of sin to even the most inept of readers. This work stands alongside The Bible as one of the greatest religious-literary masterpieces of all time.
Dante’s Inferno presents the reader with many questions and thought provoking dialogue to interpret. These crossroads provide points of contemplation and thought. Dante’s graphic depiction of hell and its eternal punishment is filled with imagery and allegorical meanings. Examining one of these cruxes of why there is a rift in the pits of hell, can lead the reader to interpret why Dante used the language he did to relate the Idea of a Just and perfect punishment by God.
Dante's "Inferno" is full of themes. But the most frequent is that of the weakness of human nature. Dante's descent into hell is initially so that Dante can see how he can better live his life, free of weaknesses that may ultimately be his ticket to hell. Through the first ten cantos, Dante portrays how each level of his hell is a manifestation of human weakness and a loss of hope, which ultimately Dante uses to purge and learn from. Dante, himself, is about to fall into the weaknesses of humans, before there is some divine intervention on the part of his love Beatrice, who is in heaven. He is sent on a journey to hell in order for Dante to see, smell, and hear hell. As we see this experience brings out Dante's weakness' of cowardice, wrath and unworthiness. He is lead by Virgil, who is a representation of intellect. Through Dante's experiences he will purge his sins.
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.
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words,” Robert Frost once said. As is made fairly obvious by this quote, Frost was an adroit thinker. It seems like he spent much of his life thinking about the little things. He often pondered the meaning and symbolism of things he found in nature. Many readers find Robert Frost’s poems to be straightforward, yet his work contains deeper layers of complexity beneath the surface. His poems are not what they seem to be at first glance. These deeper layers of complexity can be clearly seen in his poems “The Road Not Taken”, “Fire and Ice”, and “Birches”.
What path would you choose? You’re out one day hiking, and you arrive at a split in the road. The left path is clear, but, the right path looks more adventurous with the overgrown plants. This similar situation is demonstrated in Robert Frost’s Allegorical poem “The Road Less Traveled.” However Frost figuratively compares the decision to a life decision. Robert Frost demonstrates that mankind cannot determine their own fate but in fact influence it in “The Road Not Taken,” by the use of an extended metaphor, imagery, and symbolism.
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
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
When reading “The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost, I found that it was personal, especially to the author. The fact that it was written in first person form helped me to conclude that it was probably about the author. I think the reasoning behind his writing of this poem was because in life, you have many obstacles to overcome and many choices and decisions to make, which opens a path that leads the way to your future. Since those things relate to Frost, I think it motivated him to write this poem on a personal basis, like a short autobiography on his life. It motivated him because he could then tell others about his life and give advice and guidance to the people that read his poetry.
Life itself is built upon layers of decisions, substantial or miniscule, that become intertwined in an attempt to define who we are. I believe that the choices we make will ultimately work to construct our future, whether it is the way in which I perceive the world around me, or what I choose to believe. In “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost manages to further illustrate these points in order to convey deeper meaning within the text.
The poem entitled “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is perhaps one of the most well-known poems to date. Frost’s poem explores the different paths and choices individuals are presented with throughout their life, which can later influence their lives significantly more than originally anticipated. Specifically, Frost describes a fork in the road at which the narrator must choose between two very different paths with varying outcomes. “The Road Not Taken” emphasizes the importance of taking the less traveled road through Frost’s usage of a wide range of literary devices. “The Road Not Taken” suggests that individuals should fully experience the process of making a choice before reaching a decision as that one single choice may later have
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” Robert Frost is one of the worlds most renowned and beloved American poets whose work was enthused through the use of American colloquial speech, he wrote poems about rural life that captivated everyone’s mind. Frost was born in San Francisco on the 26th of March 1874, at the tender age of eleven after his father’s death the family moved to New England. Some of his most important poems include: “The Road Not Taken”, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening”, and “Fire and Ice” are examples of ways Frost utilized nature to depict that he was indeed a contemplative human being. Frost employs the theme nature to determine his
The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost is a poem about decisions and how they can impact someone’s life. However, many other literary devices are used in the poem in order to make the theme more obvious to its readers. This poem is often confused as focusing on how the narrator takes the road less traveled, when it is actually meant to focus on the choice that the narrator denies, or the road not taken. Frost mentions the doubt and worry that comes along with decision-making, but how perseverance can make it worthwhile. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost introduces a theme of making life decisions, while using symbolism and tone as tools to show his readers that the right choice is not always the easy one.