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Analysis The Road Not Taken

Decent Essays

The Choice
An analysis of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” The most common interpretation of “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is that the speaker is trying to decide which road to take. Does he want to take the road that everyone else takes because it is easier and all the clearing has been done for him, or does he want to take a chance and take the road less traveled where he has to clear his own path? The poem is an excellent example of the use of symbolism .The poet uses the two roads to symbolize choices made in life. The yellow road filled with fallen leaves indicates that the poem is taking place in autumn, which denotes that the speaker is in the later years of his life. The use of these simple images emphasizes that no …show more content…

The split in the road is a metaphor for a choice that the speaker has been faced with. Throughout the entire poem, the poet uses the road as an extended metaphor to represent an important choice he is faced with. In “And looked down one as far as I could/ to where it bent in the undergrowth,” (lines 4-5), the speaker is referring to the part of his future that he is currently in control of, and also the part that is unknown . Just like he can only see so much of the path, he can only see the immediate results of his decision, and not how it will affect his life in the extended future. ”Then he took the other just as fair” (line 6)In this line the speaker decides that even though he has spent most of his life watching other people take one road, he wants to be different and is going to take the other that seems just as interesting .This is a metaphor for a decision that the speaker didn’t have much time to think about but had to make in a hurry, as indicated by “Oh, I kept the first for another day!/Yet knowing how way leads on to way,/I doubted if I should ever come back.” (lines 13 -15) The speaker wishes he could take both of the roads, but realizes that it probably isn’t a possibility. This is a metaphor for making a decision that changes everything, a decision that cannot be reversed once you make. This line describes human nature of always wondering …show more content…

Nature in this poem sets the scene and can hold a metaphorical meaning as well. “TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,” (line 1) sets the scene. The speaker tells the reader the woods are yellow, so we can conclude that the poem is taking place in autumn. This could be a metaphor for the time in the speaker’s life that he is making this decision ,the fall of his life when he is beginning to get old.” To where it bent in the undergrowth;” (line 5), the reader finds out the woods must be pretty thick, because the road can disappear in the undergrowth, could represent an aspect of the speaker’s future that he is unsure of.” And having perhaps the better claim,/Because it was grassy and wanted wear”(lines 7-8) the speaker is bias in favor of nature, he thinks one path may be better than the other because fewer people have worn it down. These lines are a metaphor for a decision that is less commonly made.” And both that morning equally lay/in leaves no step had trodden black, (lines 11-12) here the reader sees autumn images continue. It appears that it is morning time. There is a contradiction to an earlier claim that one path is less traveled. The lines tell the reader the leaves have just fallen masking that the path was more or less traveled. Metaphorically this points out there is ultimately no way to tell which choice

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