frost

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The Road Not Taken

In line one, Frost introduces the elements of his primary metaphor, the diverging roads. Lines two to three expresses the speaker's disappointment with his human limitations; he must make a choice. The choice is not easy, since "long I stood" before coming to a decision. Lines four and five examine the path as best the narrator can. However his vision is limited because the path bends and is covered over. These lines indicate that although the speaker would like to acquire more information, he is prevented from doing so because of the nature of his environment. In the following three lines, lines six through eight, the speaker indicates that the second path is a more attractive choice because it appears as though nobody has ventured down it recently. However, he remains ambivalent, since the traveled path is "just as fair.?Although the poet breaks for a new stanza after line 10, the comparison of the paths continues in lines nine through twelve. Here, the speaker states that the paths are "really about the same." Neither path has been traveled lately. Although he's searching for a clear logical reason to choose a single path, not one presents itself. In lines thirteen through fifteen, the speaker makes his decision. He tries to rationalize that he will be able to traverse both paths one day. However, he is quick to dismiss his hopes. Ending line thirteen, the exclamation point conveys excitement, but that excitement is quickly undercut by the admission contained in the following lines. In the final four lines, the only stanza beginning with a new sentence, the tone clearly shifts. The speaker imagines himself in the future, discussing his life. What he suggests, here, though, appears to contradict what he has said earlier. At the end of the poem, in the future, he will claim that the paths were different from each other and that he, courageous, did not choose the conventional one.
Frost's quarrel with the world is apparent in this poem. The speaker of this poem, presumable Frost himself, is forced to make a decision. Literally, he must choose a path in the woods. However, Frost's paths in the woods metaphorically describe the decisions that one must make in life. Frost is perturbed with the world because, like the speaker, he has to choose between two divergent paths. Each path appears to be suitable, yet, Fro...

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... done something or spoken a word that indicates who he really is, there is no turning back, in cannot be undone.
Once again at the end of the poem regret hangs over the traveler. He realizes that at the end of his life, somewhere ages and ages hence? he will have the regrets about having never gone back and traveling the road he did not take. Yet, he remains proud of his decision and recognizes that it was this path that he chose which helped him live the life he did. “I took the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference? To this man, the most important thing was that he did not have to follow the crowd and could stand independent and travel down the road he really wanted to. If he had not, he would not be the same man he is now.
There are many equally valid meanings to this poem and Robert Frost may have intended this. He may have been trying to achieve a universal meaning. In other words, there is no real moral to the poem. There is simply a narrator who makes a decision in his life that changed the direction of his life. It allows all readers from all different experiences to relate to the poem and encourages each to peruse his own dreams and individuality.

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