Critical Analysis of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken
The speaker in Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken' gives the reader insight into human nature with each line of poetry. While, Frost had not originally intended for this to be an inspirational poem, line by line, the speaker is encouraging each reader to seek out his or her own personal path in the journey of life. Romanticizing the rural woods of New England creates the perfect setting for the theme of self-discovery laid out and described by the speaker.
Robert Frost's original intent in writing the poem was not to convey the inspiration that it has for almost a hundred years. He had written the poem to poke fun at his friend, Edward Thomas, with whom he had taken many walks. Thomas was hesitant and always wondering what would happen if he had chosen a different path (http://www.yoga.com/raw/readings/frost_road.html). In fact, Frost sent the poem to his friend, then in France, and got the response, ?What are you trying to do with me?? (http://www.libarts.sfasu.edu/Frost/PopPoems.html). However, Frost did see the impact the poem was having and stated, 'Do not follow where the path may lead?Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.'
The speaker communicates many things in the first stanza of the poem. The first line, ?Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,? uses imagery with the color yellow, the color of gold, to show that the speaker sees an opportunity ahead of him. The two roads symbolizes the choices and consequences he must choose. The next line, ?And sorry I could not travel both,? illustrates how difficult it is to make a choice. It is impossible not to wonder what could happen by choosing the other road and what he could be missing out on. ?And being one traveler long I stood,? shows how the speaker would like to be in two places at once. Unable to accomplish this, he takes a long time to decide on what he should do. Finally, the speaker describes studying the first option, looking as far into the future as he possibly could with the lines, ?And looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth.?
The speaker continues to convey his message in the second stanza of ?The Road Not Taken.? In the opening line of this part of the poem, the speaker says, ?Then took the other, as just as fair.? Here, he is turning his attention to the second road...
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...ng the road he eventually chose made him the person he is. In being forced to choose and face the consequences, he was afraid to make a wrong decision. He is better off for having even made any decision at all instead of standing there, procrastinating. Although one person cannot take all the roads in life, trying to choose everything will leave that person just as empty as choosing the wrong path.
In finally choosing, he changes the direction of his life and encourages the reader to explore new territory or create something new. Above all, one has to be true to himself and follow his heart.
The speaker, throughout Robert Frost?s ?The Road Not Taken,? is a way of identifying with the reader through basic human feelings and struggles. Everyone faces hard decisions and feels the struggle within to choose the right path on which to base his or her life. It is how we choose and how we deal with what is down the road that makes us who we are.
Works Cited
Baym, Nina, et. al. The Norton Anthology of American Liturature. 5th edition. Vol.II. New York: Norton, 1998.
http://www.yoga.com/raw/readings/frost_road.html)
http://www.libarts.sfasu.edu/Frost/PopPoems.html
Everyone is a traveler, carefully choosing which roads to follow on the map of life. There is never a straight path that leaves one with but a single direction in which to head. Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken'; can be interpreted in many different ways. The shade of light in which the reader sees the poem depends upon her past, present, and the attitude with which she looks toward her future. In any case however, this poem clearly demonstrates Frost’s belief that it is the road that one chooses that makes him the man he is.
At first the traveler believes that this second path must be a better choice, which he says in line seven by stating that it may have a “better claim”. When the speaker says he “took the other, just as fair,” it is a simile comparing the ways he observed both paths to be the same. “Because it was grassy and wanted wear,”(8) is an example of personification by the traveler, saying that the second path “wanted wear”, or wanted to be taken. In the end, the traveler realizes that the choices are both equivalent in a way that will lead to a final outcome. Then the traveler decides in the third stanza that he will take path two, or decides to make the second choice.
The ambiguity which dominates the poem seems to be intentional. The only certainty in the poem is that it deals with a solitary traveler who has come to a fork in the road and must choose which way to go.
What does the narrator mean when he says that taking the road less traveled by has made all the difference when the roads seem to be the same throughout the poem?
In “The Road Not Taken” Frost emphasizes that every person is a traveler choosing the roads to follow on the map of their continuous journey-life. There is never a straight path that leads a person one sole direction in which to head. Regardless of the original message that Robert Frost had intended to convey, “The Road Not Taken” has left me with many different interpretations. Throughout this poem, it is obvious that decisions are not easy to make and each decision will lead you down a different path.
In the opening stanza, Frost describes coming to a point during a walk along a rural road that diverges into two separate, yet similar paths. The narrator finds that he ...
Life itself is built upon layers of decisions, substantial or miniscule, that become intertwined in an attempt to define who we are. I believe that the choices we make will ultimately work to construct our future, whether it is the way in which I perceive the world around me, or what I choose to believe. In “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost manages to further illustrate these points in order to convey deeper meaning within the text.
The first stanza introduced the reader to the decision the author would have to make. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" to me signified that the result of his decision would arise from the same origin to which in my own life, I can reflect on. And though he would like to have seen the outcome of both paths, he knew he could only choose one. And to help him decide, he would look down both choices and see only until the road took a bend.
The two roads presented in this poem represent difficult decisions we are faced with in life. He uses the relationship between the paths and real life decisions throughout the whole poem. This is an example of extended metaphor, which is used to help the readers understand the analogy between the two. The man in the poem said: “long I stood” (3), which lets us know the decision was not made instantly. It was hard for the man to make a final judgment.
In the poem, “The Road Not Taken”, the speaker has to make a big decision in his life. This poem talks about a person who comes across an intersection or a fork in the road and he has to choose which way to follow. The road is a metaphor of the choices we make in life. As the speaker ponders his choices, he feels strongly that whatever “road” he takes will be for good. So he must weigh his decision well in order to come up with the best choice and not end up regretting it. The speaker considers his thought wisely. He says, “And looked down as far as I could / To where it bent in the undergrowth”, by giving it a proper thought he weighs his choices well and in the end, chooses to follow the road “less traveled”. “The Road Not Taken” signifies a difficult choice in a person’s life that could offer him an easy or hard way out. There is no assurance of what lies ahead; if there will be success or sorrows. But a person has to take risk making up his mind about which way to choose because this is the first step of head...
Above all, 'The Road Not Taken'; can truly be interpreted through much symbolism as a clear-sighted representation of two fair choices. The two roads in the poem, although, 'diverging,'; lead in different directions. At the beginning they appear to be somewhat similar, but is apparent that miles away they will grow farther and farther away from each other. Similar to many choices faced in life. It is impossible to foresee the consequences of most major decisions we make and it is often necessary to make these decisions based on a little more than examining which choice 'wanted wear.'; In
In the poem, a person is walking along a path in an autumn forest in the early hours of the morning, when he stumbles upon a fork in the road. The speaker wishes that he would be able to travel down both of them, but he has places to go, and he does not have enough time. One is worn out from people walking along it so much, and the other is grassy and barely worn from fewer people walking on it. Although neither of them had been traveled on that day, as the leaves were still fresh on the ground, the speaker was compelled to travel the second or grassier path. The speaker fin...
The main theme of the poem that Frost attempts to convey is how important the decisions that one makes can be, and how they affect one’s future. In lines 2-3, he expresses the emotions of doubt and confusion by saying, “And sorry I could not travel/ And be one traveler, long I stood”, which explains how the speaker contemplated their decision of which road to take. In the closing, line 20 of the poem further reestablishes the theme when it states, “that has made all the difference”, meaning that making the decision of which road to take for themselves is the important key for a successful future. Frost helps to express this theme by using symbolism to portray a road as one’s journey of life. Using symbolism, Frost suggests that the speaker of this poem is taking the harder of the two roads presented before them, because the road the speaker chooses, “leaves no step had trodden black” (12...
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...