Robert Frost, was an American poet, son of William Prescott Frost, Jr., and Isabelle Moodie, was born on 26 March 1874 in San Francisco, California. His father was a journalist, and his mother was a Scottish schoolteacher, and when Frost was eleven his father died of tuberculosis, leaving Isabelle and Robert only eight dollars to support themselves. As a result, Isabelle and Robert moved in with his grandfather William Frost, Sr., in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Robert had a strong interest in poetry and writing, publishing his first poem in Lawrence High School’s student magazine. Frost studied for a brief stint at Dartmouth College and joined the Theta Delta Chi fraternity, before leaving to ultimately work as editor of the local newspaper. In 1894 Robert frost sold his first professional poem, “My Butterfly. An Elegy,” to The Independent for fifteen dollars, and had five poems privately printed thereafter. Frost proposed to Elinor Miriam White, a former classmate from St. Lawrence University due to his recent success. He waited for her to graduate while studying liberal arts at Harvard University, and in 1895 were married and had six children: sons Elliot, Carol, and daughters Lesley, Irma, Marjorie, and Elinor Bettina. He left Harvard without graduating to move to the family farm in New Hampshire that his grandfather gave them as a wedding gift before he passed. The Frost family spent nine years on the farm, where Robert wrote some of his most well-known poems in the morning before he started his daily chores on the farm. As the farm did not provide a significant source of income, Frost began working at the Pinkerton Academy and New Hampshire Normal School as an English teacher from 1906-1912. While working he would often submit h...
... middle of paper ...
...s the other road, the one that has seen little wear during the recent years, as the road is overgrown with grass like a fresh snowy powder beckoning someone’s foot. He contemplates the possibility of taking one road now, and the other at another time, before he realizes that sometimes you have to make a decision and keep moving as you are unable to redo certain things in life. He informs us that he ultimately ended up, “taking the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference” (899). However, only later did he realize how significant such a decision would end up being in his life, and how such a minor event or decision can alter your life’s path. In his final line of the poem we are able to visualize the two roads better as he recalls they were not “equally fair,” but instead, as mentioned in the video analysis, “he recalls one road is less traveled.”
The poem is set in the fall when the leaves are changing colors and beginning to cover the ground. The speaker of the poem is faced with an unfamiliar fork in the road and is forced to decide which direction he or she must go. As the speaker is deliberating, he is “sorry” he cannot just travel both and it appears to be because the speaker has a fear of picking the wrong one (Frost 2). Although he “looked down one as far as I could” there was no seeing the end (4). Just like in a life, it is possible to have an idea of what will happen and there is no telling which choices will turn out beneficial and which will not. The speaker knows that although the paths are similar the outcome of picking the wrong one could be life changing. Even though he is upset he must trust in himself to know which one would be best for him in the long run.
Robert Frost is undoubtedly gifted when it comes to his poetry, but not all aspects of his life were so easy. One of the most troubling areas in Frost’s life was his family. He held a long term engagement to his wife Elinor, whom he pleaded to marry. Also, his children were plagued with birth defects, terminal illness, and emotional instability. The Frosts lost four of their children at an early age, including daughter Elinor Bettina who died three days after birth. In 1938, after months of deteriorating health, Frost’s wife Elinor died of heart failure. Frost was so shaken that he collapsed and could not attend the memorial services. Later, in 1940, Frost was utterly disturbed by his son Carol’s suicide.
Robert Frost had always been interested in poetry even from a young age. He graduated from Lawrence High School at the top of his class along with Elinor White, who he fell in love with. He and Elinor then went their separate ways, while he went on to attend Dartmouth College she attended St. Lawrence University. He and Elinor did get married a few year later when they both had graduated and Robert was working different jobs as he was having no luck trying to publish his poems in the United States. Because he was not able to get any of his poems published he moved to England in hopes of better luck. After only a short time he managed to get a view works published in England and the news of his works started a lot of buzz. While all of this was going on he had no idea that people in America were also beginning to hear about his work. With the beginning of World War One he moved his family back to the United States were he took up job lecturing in colleges, but he was now living the life he had always wanted, a successful poet with a family. Throughout the rest of his life kept writing and publishing poems which he received many awards for.
Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” (rpt. In Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson, Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 10th ed. [Boston: Wadsworth, 2009] 725 presents itself with a traveler that is dissatisfied with the decision that he has to make. A situation of life sometime requires a decision to be made between two things that will have a huge impact in the end. The consequences are not always what we expect.
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
“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
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.
Choices are never easy, facing hundreds upon thousands of them in our lifetime, man has to make decisions based upon these choices. Some decisions are clear while others are sometimes not clear and more difficult to make. The poem "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost is a prime example of these choices in life. This poem is a first person narrative that is seen by most people as being told by Frost. The poem opens up with the narrator encountering a point in the woods that has a trail diverge into two separate paths. In the poem Frost presents the idea of man facing the difficult predilection of a moment and a lifetime. I believe this idea in the poem is embodied in the fork in the road, the decision between the two paths, and the decision to select the road not taken.
Frost went back to Massachusetts to teach and to work at a variety of jobs like delivering newspapers and factory labor. He hated these jobs with a passion, finally feeling his true calling as a poet (4). The poet favored Ralph Waldo Emerson, and read many of his works (6). In 1894 Robert Frost had his first poem published in The Independent, the title of his poem was “My Butterfly: an Elegy” (7). Frost proposed to Elinor, and she said no because she wanted him to finish college first, so the poet then attended Harvard Unive...
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
Frost’s life was full of tragedies, yet he was still able to become an accomplished poet. According to Poets.org, Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco. When he was only 11 years old, Frost’s dad, William Prescott Frost, Jr, passed away. The death of his father caused his mother, Isabelle Moodie, to move her family to Massachusetts. Frost became interested in poetry in high school. His first published poem was “My Butterfly.” This poem was published in 1894 in a New York newspaper called The Independent (Poets.org).
Robert Frost was born to an editor for a father, and a member of the Swedenborgian church. His father started as a teacher, and then became the editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin. Isabelle Moodie, his mother, baptized him with the Swedenborgian church. Later on in Frost’s life, he left this church. Frost was born in San Francisco (“Biography of Robert Frost”, poemhunter.com). In 1994, be published his first poem, “The Butterfly: An Elegy,” on November 8, 1894 at age 20. He published this work in the New York newspaper Frost was a unique poet in the way that he stood in between the nineteenth-century poetry, and modern poetry. James M. Cox said that, “Though his career fully spans the modern period and though it is impossible to speak of him as anything other than a modern poet, it is difficult to place him in the main tradition of modern poetry,” (“Robert Frost”, poetryfoundation.org).
Robert Frost, a poet that mastered the imagery of nature through his words. Such vivid details compressed in a few stanzas explains the brilliancy of his writing. He was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco. By the 1920s, he was the most celebrated poet in America; with his fame and honor increasing as well. His poems created themes like nature, communication, everyday life, isolation of the individual, duty, rationality versus imagination, and rural life versus urban life. The most controversial theme of this poems is nature and if his poems have a dark side in them. Readers can easily be guided to the fact that his poems are centered on nature; however, it is not. Frost himself says, "I am not a nature poet. There is almost a person in
This poem is one of many written by Frost in 1916 and it is commonly used in high school writing classes. It has been written about frequently and often analyzed because of the connection people feel to the poem for the reason that everyone has to make life choices. The reading of the poem touches a wide variety of readers because each one can identify with the writers predicament of having to make a choice, with two different options, as in the poem which road to take either the well-traveled path or as he decides the less journeyed. As an outcome of this choice, the writer states, that his life was profoundly different than it would have been had he taken the other road. The other road the more traveled and seemingly the safer of the two makes the reader seem more fearless to except what the unknown has to offer thus making his own way in the world. In reading further the roads are almost the same both being beautiful and equally passable. The writer tries to explain why things happened the way they did and that is a significant moment in his life. One might pick the road that gets them to w...
The overarching theme throughout the entire poem is that of choices. The concept of “two roads diverged,” or a split in the road, is a metaphor representing a choice which the narrator must make. Being “sorry [he] could not travel both… [being] one traveler” illustrates that, although he wishes he could see the results of both choices, as seen in saying he “looked as far as [he] could to where it bent,” he is but one pers...