The Ambiguous Road

The Ambiguous Road
Melissa Wise
ENG 125: Introduction to Literature
Elizabeth Parks
Jun 3, 2013

The Ambiguous Road
Robert Frost was a brilliant American poet. According to the biography list on the poet.org website, Frost lived from 1874 until 1963 (2013). While he is a world renowned poet, one of his greatest works was “The Road Not Taken.” Frost had a way with words that managed to touch the very soul of his readers. While there are many different methods that critics use to analyze literature, the easiest approach for a Frost poem is the reader-response approach because of the way that Frost uses ambiguity, symbolism and persona to reach his readers. The reader-response approach is “widely used” because it helps the reader “find a personal link or imaginative entry into a story, poem, or play” (Clugston, 2010, Section 16.2). This method allows you to ask a series of questions to ensure that you are not simply using your personal feelings and opinions in your critic and instead you are truly studying each aspect of the work of literature. This aspect is most helpful when studying the poem “The Road Not Taken” because the poem is meant to dig deep into your soul and make you feel the inner conflict of the person standing at the fork in the road. This approach is also effective because the reader-response analysis method gets the reader to really think about how the literature affects them (Ruppert, 1981). This is definitely useful in poetry because a great majority of people do not like or do not understand poetry.
As many of Frost’s poems are ambiguous, “The Road Not Taken” is definitely no exception. Ambiguity is the “use of language that has more than one meaning, creating uncertainty about how to interpret what has been stated” (Clugston, 2010, Section 1.2). “The Road Not Taken” is ambiguous because throughout the entire poem all Frost mentions is a man standing at a fork in the path. The man is trying to decide which path to take. Should he take the one that is well worn by many travelers before him? Or perhaps the one that is overgrown and far less traveled? There is no mention of internal conflict or a decision that the man must make. Simply that he needs to determine the correct path to take to get where he is going.
“The Road Not Taken” is so interesting because it truly resonates with so many people at different times in their lives. Whether you are the high school student who is trying to determine whether you should go into the military or go to college or if you are the eighty year old man dying of cancer who needs to decide whether or not to pursue treatment, we will all be at a cross roads in our lives at one point or another. In the poem, the man chooses to taken the less traveled path. In the examples above, that could mean that he chose the military instead of college or that he elected not to receive treatment for his cancer and just live life to the fullest for the time that he has left. That is why this poem is so fascinating. It truly makes a direct hit into the subconscious of many people.
The persona of the main character also makes it very easy to fall in love with him. While there is no dialogue in the poem, you can definitely relate to the person that is narrating the poem. The man at the fork in the road could be you. Frost’s use of symbolism, ambiguity and persona in “The Road Not Taken” is truly ingenious for a man that never finished college.
Robert Frost was an extremely powerful writer and poet. His work is lauded as some of the best poetry in the world. “The Road Not Taken” represents how truly brilliant he was as a writer encompassing so many different writing concepts in such a short poem. One could use any number of analysis techniques to critique this poem; however, the best method to use would be the reader-response technique. This technique allows the critic to completely engulf themselves in the poem and not only determine what the author was saying but also shed light on their own personal struggles and beliefs. The ambiguity, persona and symbolism used in “The Road Not Taken” makes this poem one of the best ever written.

References
Clugston, R. W. (2010). Journey into literature. San Diego, California: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.
Robert Frost. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/192
Ruppert, P. (1981). Applying Reader-Response Analyis in Literature and Film Classes. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3529919

References: Clugston, R. W. (2010). Journey into literature. San Diego, California: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Robert Frost. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/192 Ruppert, P. (1981). Applying Reader-Response Analyis in Literature and Film Classes. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3529919