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In “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost gives his readers a speaker standing at a “fork” in the road- or having to make a decision. Robert Frost uses extended metaphor, irony, and an unreliable narrator to show his reader’s that, when choosing life courses, one must consider where the path is actually going verses from how it may appear. Decisions fill the lives of human beings, and this speaker faces the remorse he holds for the decisions he’s made.…
In the Poem the setting is a literal setting. This is described in the first line of the poem “Two Roads diverged in a yellow wood”. Frost goes on to describe each path in front of him and that he could see the same distance down both paths.…
Frost uses the images presented in the poem in a very involved and general way. The paths and the fork no longer refer to their definitions, but instead as keywords in a description of life. Through the poem, Frost is defining life as a series of decisions. Some of these decisions may, at the time, be thought of as insignificant, while others could be thought of as very significant. Frost argues that a decision's significance at the time is not really important, for any choice will change one's life. Every day, people, including the narrator of the poem, are presented with "Two roads" that diverge "in a yellow wood." These roads are not concrete or physical, but rather represent choices. The fact that one road is "grassy and wanted wear" while the other was commonly traversed shows the reader that some choices require one to choose something that is not commonly sought or to do something…
In Robert Frosts’ poem “Stopping by woods on a snowy evening”, Frost uses symbolism and personification to tell a story about a man’s battle with responsibility and society versus straying from the accepted path of life. Throughout the poem, Frosts’ use of detail helps push the story along and get the reader into that field. The reader starts to feel the cool, brisk breeze and hear the silence of the nothingness. With as short as this poem is, the reader really feels a sense of a story here rather than just a four stanza poem.…
The perspective of life is led by what the imagination captures. For some individuals, connecting to life can be just as difficult as a five year old trying to run a marathon. “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he…” (Bible, 1979). The power that shapes this expression can help anyone achieve great things or just waste one 's life altogether. That is why I think that literature found in songs, plays, stories, and poems helps all of us make a connection with life. Literature gives us a broader perspective in our imagination. The poem, "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost is one of those pieces of literature that help us connect to life. This paper will explain why "The Road Not Taken" captured my attention as a reader, evaluate the poem by using the reader-response approach, and finally describe said approach.…
The poem captured my interest through the use of images and persona. The ability of Robert Frost to use these elements and weave a poem that relates to the proverbial “fork in the road” drew me into the text. I was able to relive my critical life path decisions by reading the poem. I was also able…
The poem "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost is a first person narrative tale of a monumental moment in the author’s life. He is faced between the choice of a moment and a lifetime manifested in his poem. Walking down a rural road the narrator encounters a point on his travel that diverges into two separate similar paths. In Robert Frost’s poem "The Road Not Taken", Frost presents the idea of man facing the difficult unalterable choice of a lifetime. This idea in Frost’s poem is embodied in the fork in the road, the decision between the two paths, and the speaker’s decision to select the road not taken.…
The use of Frost’s imagery can be first found in the title, “The Road Not Taken.” The title introduces its main use of symbolism with roads. The figurative use of roads throughout the poem is a metaphor for making decisions and the paths taken every day throughout life. Frost introduces the…
Frost's poem, “The Road Not Taken,” is an extended metaphor for lost possibilities or missed opportunities. The persona reflects upon the impacts of a decision and, perchance, what may have been. This is evident in, “I shall be telling this with a sigh/ Somewhere ages and ages hence.” Thus, the responder can conceive the persona is dubious as to whether the right decision has been made.…
Cited: Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” The Norton Anthology of Poetry. 4th edition. Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy. New York: Norton, 1997. 701-702. Print.…
Frost first introduces the primary symbol of the poem in the first line; “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both.” If interpreted literally the poem is that of a man at a separation of paths in a yellow wood. The symbolism in the poem, however, involves the use of both roads as symbols of the choices made in the speaker’s life and the consequences of making those choices. In addition to the two roads symbolizing a crossing in the speaker’s life, there is a sense of regret in the speaker’s words. “And sorry I could not travel both.” Even though the speaker after much examination of both paths eventually makes a decision about which path he will choose to take, he also establishes that the decision, whether made irrationally or thought long and hard about, will change the speaker’s life in unpredictable ways. Without this symbolism represented by the fork in the road, this poem would have no choice but to be taken literally and would lose the recondite meaning behind the two paths diverged in a yellow…
Robert Frost grew up in a state of turmoil. From his tumultuous childhood right up until his death, Frost was a character who could speak at Harvard and live on a farm in New Hampshire. He could dazzle the brightest students with poetic ingenious, but boil life down to, “It’s hard to get into this world and hard to get out of it. And what’s in between doesn’t make much sense. If that sounds pessimistic, let it stand” (Updike 535). Robert Frost’s poems “Mending Wall” and “The Road Not Taken” both exemplify the struggle between individual autonomy and the confines that society puts on it through deceivingly simple speech. Frost specifically deals with the idea that life is no more than a series of relationships and choices, which are never simple to discern.…
A visual that the fork represents a decision that must be made where each road leads to different destinations. A handful of lines provide metaphors that would support this, but it is the ones in the final two stanzas that really relay the message. The narrator says, “Oh, I kept the first for another day! / Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back” (Frost, p.689). The audience can see that there is a dilemma that is faced where these roads will probably lead in a direction where the narrator cannot return. The poem concludes with the statement, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference” (Frost, p.689). One can only conclude from these words that the decision to take one road rather than the other, has “made all the difference” (Frost,…
Robert Frost wrote many magnificent works of poetry within his lifetime. Two of his poems that were written within seven years of each other, “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, have such remarkable comparisons within each other. Frost plays on many aspects within each, while still keeping consistency of themes such as life, nature, and the emotions of the narrator and how they affect their lives and choices. With the undertone of life being a key component, one speaks of a choice to make and how it can affect the life from that moment forward, the other hints at a life lived and reflection.…
Regardless of how one interprets the poem, Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” shares a similar theme: the choices…