The Road Not Taken Duality

Many poets express their feelings in their writing, perhaps as a form of therapy. Some poems may be cheery, while others may be dark. Usually, the readers decide if they can find light in the poem. Poems are often interpreted differently depending on the reader. Frost shows duality through nature, relationships, and choices. In the poem “The Road Not Taken”, Frost mentions taking the road less traveled. The road less traveled is not mainstream like all the others. Taking this road will give a different story to tell. Going another way is unique and shows that there is more than one way to go. Possibly regretful of taking the road less traveled, Frost states “Then took the other, as just as fair, / and having perhaps the better claim, / Because it was grassy and wanted wear; / Though as for the passing there Had worn them really about the same, / And both that morning equally lay”. Although his story is unique to tell, he ended up the same as everyone else. William H. Pritchard mentions, “take the road less traveled by, and it will make "all the difference"-does not maintain itself when the poem is looked at more carefully”. He is no more special than anyone. The poem “The Secret Sits” states that the truth is not
“Birches” takes a man back in time to his childhood. A birch tree with bent down limbs sits outside his window. He imagines that “. . . some boys been swinging them”. The thought of the boys playing on the tree brings him back in time just for a moment. Frank Lentricchia mentions him escaping from reality, “. . . The upward swinging of the boy becomes an emblem for imagination's swing away from the tangled, dark wood; a swing away from the "straighter, darker trees"; a swing into the absolute freedom of isolation, the severing of all "considerations.’”. The tree is not bent by boys swinging on them but from an ice storm. Sadly, the man will never go back to being a child. That part of his life is now