Symbolism In The Road Not Taken

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Chopin uses spring time and nature as a symbols of the renewal and hopefulness Mrs. Mallard is feeling now that she believes her husband has died. Chopin writes that in her room Mrs. Mallard "could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life," (307). Spring represents new life and Chopin uses that representation in order to suggest that Mrs. Mallard feels like she too will have a new life now that her husband is dead. This is not what the reader would expect a new widow to feel, but Chopin uses this symbolism to foreshadow future events in the short story.
Hope and renewal are also symbolized through Chopin’s descriptions of the sky in paragraph six. While looking through her window, …show more content…

The narrator of the poem writes that in the end he takes “the one less traveled by” (line 19). This is in contradiction to what was written in the poem previously. Previously the narrator has said that in regards to the two roads “the passing there / had worn them really about the same,” (lines 9-10). This indicates that not one path or the other had been travelled on more or less as the roads are equally worn. The narrator also states that the roads “equally lay / in leaves” (lines 11-12). This again suggests that neither road is taken more than the other and that the title of the poem cannot refer to the road most people decide not to …show more content…

In the beginning of the poem the narrator hesitates at the fork in the road before continuing on with his journey as he does not know which road to take. We see that a decision has to be made as the narrator says he is “sorry [he] could not travel both,” (line 2). So he waits for a while to weigh his options.
To begin the decision making process the narrator “look[s] down one as far as [he] could” (line 4). The narrator does this to see all of the potential future outcomes of making this decision, but he can only see so much “to where [the road] bent in the undergrowth,” (line 5). The narrator then takes to the other road as it may have “the better claim,” (line 7). He is still uncertain of which choice is the better option and also states “the passing there / had worn them really about the same,” (lines 9-10). This indicates that there is not one clear correct choice in this

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