Metaphors, Imagery, and Personification in The Road Not Taken

Have you ever encountered a difficult, life-changing decision? Have you ever made a choice, thinking you could go back to the other route, but had your decision lead to other decisions and so on, until you ultimately realize you’re too far to turn back? In “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost interprets these divergent paths, or irreversible decisions that must be made in our life, through the stylistic devices of metaphor, imagery, and personification, illustrating that there are challenging choices ahead which may initially seem equal, but that once those decisions are made, they can actually make “all the difference”(20).

This poem employs an extended metaphor, allowing the reader to imagine several comparisons. The poet states, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood” (1). On a literal level, it is clear that there are two roads branching off in different directions in a yellow wood, or during autumn. A closer reading reveals that the “roads” could represent the choices and paths people make in life. Moreover the poet specifically designates, “Two roads,” which implies a difficult decision to be made. One can choose to take the easier, or the harder of the two. The “yellow wood” could additionally express a world full of bright ideas and opportunities which may be difficult to choose from. It also establishes the poem’s autumnal setting. Frost emphasizes the season by describing the fallen leaves that are undisturbed. Since autumn is followed by winter, it is a season of urgency and decay rather than of life and growth. It symbolizes the middle of one’s life or the transition of human life that ends in death. The speaker would like to come back to this place, but he knows he will never be able to. He can only move forward until ...

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...ng this tale “with a sigh”(16) of regret, he confirms that he chose the harder road, or the road “less traveled by”(19), and “that has made all the difference”(20). Ultimately, once one’s path, or decision, has been made, not only will there be no turning back, but that decision will change one’s life permanently.

There will always be challenging and possibly irreversible roads ahead in one’s life. There will be difficult forks to pass with no turning back. Once those decisions are made, it will have “made all the difference”(20). In the poem “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost utilizes metaphors, imagery, and personification to enrich the meaning of the poem. The poem makes the reader ponder how he or she will never know what could’ve been, or what they’ve missed on their journey in life, and it will leave readers always wondering about “The Road Not Taken.”