The Three Different Ages in The Road Not Taken
William George, in “Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken,’” describes the way in which Frost depicts three different ages of the narrator of the poem. These three different speakers all have to make a decision, and they face it in different ways. The middle-aged self is the most objective speaker, and he mocks the younger and older selves as they “are given to emotion, self-deception, and self-congratulation” (230). While the middle-aged self is able to maintain his objectivity, the younger and older selves are given to delusion and cannot maintain any objectivity.
The first part of the article describes the relation between the middle-aged self and the younger self. The younger self must make a decision about which path he will take. While the middle-aged self “stresses the similarity of the two roads,” the younger self lies to himself because he is “too dismayed with or too ‘sorry’ about the nature of choice to notice that ‘passing there / Had worn [the two roads] really about the same, / And both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black’” (230). The younger self pretends that one path, the path he is going to take, is different, that it is less traveled.
The second part of the article describes the relation between the middle-aged self and the older self. The older self must make a decision about whether or not he will tell the truth about his past. “In this ‘age’ of the persona, the choice will be either to tell the truth or to lie about the choice made ‘ages and ages’ before. . . . [But] the older self ignores what the middle-aged self had come to know about that first choice: that ‘both [roads] that morning equally lay.’ Only self-aggrandizing self-deception could cause the older self to ignore what the middle-aged self clearly knows” (231).
Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan et al. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2007. 695-696. Print.
Instructor Mendoza English 1B 22 July 2015. Robert Frost: Annotated Bibliography. Research Question: What are the common themes in Robert Frost's work? Robert Frost is a very successful poet from the 20th century, as well as a four time Pulitzer Prize winner.
In the “Prodigal”, the boy whom the speaker is addressing to yearns to accomplish his own goals by leaving his hometown behind and entering the urbanized world that is filled with endless opportunities and possibilities, including “[becoming] an artist of the provocative gesture”, “wanting the world and return carrying it”, and “[reclaiming] Main Street in a limo.” However, despite all these ambitious opportunities the boy wishes to pursue, he is ultimately unable to alter the perception of others who are the most familiar with his character. Rather, the people who are the most acquainted with the boy will perceive him with the same view as in the past. The thought of a newly changed boy that embraced a completely different identity while accomplishing several achievements, is incapable of affecting their perception of the past young boy from the county. This is illustrated when the speaker describes that even if the boy “stood in the field [he’d] disappear” and was still “aiming [his] eyes down the road” of opportunity, in the eyes of people who are most familiar with him, they will be unable to acknowledge this significantly changed individual. In complete contrast with those who are most familiar with him are others who are unfamiliar with his past. These individuals, whom the boy must have encountered while achieving his accomplishments,
Miller’s use of personification and symbolism in the book shows the situational irony that surrounds Willy. This highlights the overall message of blind faith towards the American Dream. The major case of irony in the book is Willy’s blind faith in the American Dream. This belief is that if one is well-liked, they will become successful. The truth is actually completely opposite. The real belief is that if one works hard, with no regard to how well liked they are, they will be successful. This relationship is shown between Willy and his neighbor Charley. While Willy believes likability is the only way to success, Charley works hard and does not care how people think of him. Through his hard work, Charley started his own business, and is now very successful. Willy, however, ends up getti...
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.
Everyone is a traveler, carefully choosing which roads to follow on the map of life. There is never a straight path that leaves one with but a single direction in which to head. Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken'; can be interpreted in many different ways. The shade of light in which the reader sees the poem depends upon her past, present, and the attitude with which she looks toward her future. In any case however, this poem clearly demonstrates Frost’s belief that it is the road that one chooses that makes him the man he is.
Frost's poem addresses the tragic transitory nature of living things; from the moment of conception, we are ever-striding towards death. Frost offers no remedy for the universal illness of aging; no solution to the fact that the glory of youth lasts only a moment. He merely commits to writing a deliberation of what he understands to be a reality, however tragic. The affliction of dissatisfaction that Frost suffers from cannot be treated in any tangible way. Frost's response is to refuse to silently buckle to the seemingly sadistic ways of the world. He attacks the culprit of aging the only way one can attack the enigmatic forces of the universe, by naming it as the tragedy that it is.
Sharon Olds’s poem, “I Go Back to May 1937,” is an emotional piece that takes the reader back to the early days as the speaker’s existence was first thought about. The speaker is a female who describes the scene when her parents first met; she does this to show her wrestling thoughts as she wishes she could prevent this first encounter. She speaks about this topic because of the horrendous future of regret and sorrow that her family would experience, and also to contemplate her own existence if her parents had never met in May of 1937. Olds uses forms of contrasting figurative language, an ironic plot, and a regretful tone to convey the conflict between the speaker and her parents while she fully comes to understanding of past actions, and how these serve as a way for her to release her feelings on the emotional subject.
a look for oneself inside” as observed from the life of the elderly woman in the sonnet (153). Moreover, as the woman looks into the lake, she commemorates her attractive and pleasant figure as a young girl. As time passes, the inevitability of old age knocks on the door of the woman, readily waiting to change the sterling, rapturous lady perceived by many. One’s appearance can change; it is up to an individual to embrace it or reject it. Plath employs a shift to accentuate a change in time.
... speaker shows the breakdown of youth’s beauty and the weakening of the machinery incorporated inside of the human body. By integrating this idea with the concept of cerebral impairment, leaves the speaker with a heightened sense of fear. Intertwining these two concepts, the speaker explores the idea of an “inverted childhood”, suggesting that when an individual reaches a peak in their development that they start to digress backwards in time, until they arrive at the primary stages in life. (Larkin 1427). “The Old Fools” explores the idea of the speakers’ gerascophobia, through analyzing the physical and mental deterioration of the elderly and their digression back into early childhood.
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
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)
“The Road Not Taken” is a part of a series of poems written by Robert Frost. In the poem, the speaker is walking on foot and comes to a fork in the road where he has to choose between two paths that are right for him to take. As he is trying to figure out what route to take, he wishes he could take both routes. The path he chooses is supposed to be less worn out, but in actuality both roads are worn out equally. The phrase, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference," talks about the choices we make in life and then how those choices one makes may have a difference in the long run. Even though the speaker in the poem wants to take the other road like people do today, it is hard to come from a decision someone has already made his or her mind up about. Taking the route a person has already chosen makes it easier and more exciting to take the road a person has chose. The speaker states that in the near future when he is older he will talk about how the road he chose changed his life in some way. Robert Frost uses roads and nature as a symbolic feature of figurative language to help readers visualize things in the poem.
Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” provide us contrasting and sometimes similar glimpses of life. “The Road Not Taken” is about taking control and living life. “Stopping by Woods on Snowy Evening” entails the desire for rest, perhaps due to the speaker’s feelings of weariness from facing life’s struggles. The poet also explains the tough choices people stand before when traveling the road of life. Sometimes people regret the possibilities of the road not chosen, sometimes people feel proud about the road they have chosen.
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.