The Road Not Taken Analysis Essay

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Recommended: The road not taken is about a choice of life

Quintavius Farms
Professor Hollenbeck

“The Road Not Taken” is one of Robert Frost’s many celebrated poems, makes anyone who reads the poem wondering about its meaning. The real implication of the poem has been the subject of several analyses. Through the course of time, one may come to consider the selection of the road they've chosen, contemplate on the potential opportunities gained or lost, and wonder about "The Road Not Taken.”
While walking in the forest, the speaker recalls approaching “two roads diverged in a yellow wood”. One would never think that while taking a scroll, they would come to such a critical moment in their life. A fork in the road, both are equally worn and they are equally leaf-covered. Leaves the traveler to make an important decision regarding which path to take. Left or Right? Knowing that only one path can be traveled, the narrator is wary with his decision “long I stood | and looked down one as far as I could | to where it bent in the undergrowth” (lines 3-5). After careful consideration, the traveler choses to take the road less traveled. The roads symbolize the choices that one may face during their journey of life. This could lead one to believe the traveler is somewhat adventures or the traveler lied about taking the road less traveled.
In an online article, William George believes the poem uses “three distinct ages” of the traveler and emphasizes the decision that the traveler must make at each of the three stages of life (230). William brilliantly distinguishes the traveler from the beginning of the poem, which he believes is at the second stage of life, from the first and third stages, stating that the traveler in the beginning teases the other two by standing by his decision. The traveler i...

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...l make are however in the prospect.” Grimes later goes on and states in her article that the speaker could not offer such information at the time, because he has not lived the difference yet to know if it were good or bad.
In conclusion, ‘The Road Not Taken” is a poem full of hard choices. Two paths in life that seems to be identical to one another that contain little differences that led to two totally different outcomes. This poem even moves deeply to reveal something on the selfishness and curiosity which dwells in the nature of human being. One in which a person will not even take into reflection for the occasions he achieved along his way, the unfussy fact that he will certainly not know what could have been, that he will certainly not know what he might have neglected in his expedition of life, will renounce him forever deliberating on “The Road Not Taken.”

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