Literary Analysis Of Emily Dickinson's 'The Road Not Taken'

Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken”, can be easily misunderstood, and perhaps for decades it was. Scholar Frank Lentricchia believed that in this poem, the message is that people don’t get a choice in life to pick one path rather than the other, because their lives are already mapped out for us. However, Mark Richardson had a different idea. He thought that it’s not that we don’t get a choice in life, it is that we don’t realize how the choice affects us until later in life. Although these two ideas sound reasonable, what Robert Frost really meant in this piece of writing was not that people choose between two paths, but instead they must forge their own.

Life. Death. Time. The poem “Life” is about how everyone birthed and lives their lives, and then everyone dies one day no matter what. Times runs out for every person on the Earth. This poem reminds me of when my great-grandmother died. She was in her nineties and my family and I thought that she would live longer than she did. It was very sudden and I was shocked at the funeral. I think it was just time for her to let go. It’s hard losing someone who is close with one. The author’s tone is light- hearted and simple. The mood of the poem can make someone feel more comfortable with the thought of death. This essay will show how the author’s tone and the reader’s mood can affect how the poem, “Life” is read.

“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is a famous poem that many people are familiar with. In the poem the speaker arrives at a fork in the road where both paths are strewn with leaves. The speaker stands there for a time to contemplate which direction to take, and finally decides to take the plunge on the one less traveled. He comforts himself with his decision by telling himself that he can take the other road another day even though he knows this is unlikely to happen. The poem concludes with the speaker’s affirmation in his choice by acknowledging the importance of his decision. Frost uses the image of two roads diverging in a yellow wood to symbolize the choices that one is confronted with in life and the consequences of making decisions.

Robert Frost's poem “The Road Not Taken” describes a traveler faced with a choice of which one of two roads to travel. He knows not where either road might lead. In order to continue on his journey, he can pick only one road. He scrutinizes both roads for the possibilities of where they may take him in his travels. Frost's traveler realizes that regret is inevitable. Regardless of his choice, he knows that he will miss the experiences he might have encountered on the road not taken.

“I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean” (Socrates). What does it mean to be this type of poet? How can someone accomplish such success in poetry, the answer is just two words Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson spent a large portion of her life in isolation, not because she was forced to or because she was ill, Dickinson simply wanted to be alone and because of her isolation she became one of the greatest female poets of all time. Emily Dickinson set the bar high for other female poets and created some of the most renowned poems in the world. The two poems “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” and “Tell all the Truth but Tell it Slant” are drastically different poems that tell two different stories, but there are some aspects that cause them to be similar: Imagery, tone, and the statement that the two poems make.

The poem “The Road Not Taken” is about how the author himself has come to a split in a path while walking in the woods without a map. The season is fall, and the leaves are turning red and yellow. He isn’t sure which way he should go, and he wishes he didn’t have to choose and could go both ways. He looks down one path as far as he can see, but he then decides to take the other. The path he decides to take is not quite as worn as the other one, the leaves are freshly fallen with no foot prints or tracks. The author reflects on how he intends to take the road that he didn 't take next time, but he doubts that he will ever come back. Instead, in the future, he will be reminded of how his decision was ultimately the right one. I decided to adapt this poem into a drawing because I feel like it can be interpreted in various ways and has a lot of hidden meanings. This poem demonstrates that everyone needs to choose their own path and not anyone else’s. This theme was communicated with Frosts usage of symbols and imagery.

The imagery prompts the reader to feel uncertainty about the likeliness of another day, but at the same time wishing very badly for more time. Collins uses imagery to illustrate the fragility of existence and humanity’s quiet desperation to keep going. The poem

The late psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross said: “The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.” This inspirational quote suggests that adversity provides people with new opportunities and can drive people to improve their life. Adversity comes in numerous forms, such as emotional, physical, and financial. Individuals have a choice to learn from adversity or allow it to break their character. However, certain types of adversity, such as severe chronic conditions or diseases, do little to improve character and the human condition. Thus, all types of adversity, pain, and suffering are not beneficial, however, most work to improve an

“Success is counted sweetest, by those who ne’er succeed.” -Emily Dickinson. When Dickinson speaks of the pain of failure and the satisfaction of victory, she speaks from experience. The hermit-like poet wrote nearly 2,000 poems by the time she died at 55. Emily Dickinson was a reserved poet and her work was largely unpopular during her life. She wrote under the topics of mortality and romance, however her works are always questioned of originality and for their vague nature.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson is one of the best poets in America. She is known for her uncommon way of writing poetry. There was a great deal of problems going on in her life. She spent mostly her entire life living in her home and only left unless she needed to do so. Unlike other poets, she did not have any order to her writings. She just wrote what she was feeling. Her work was anonymously published and later became known after her death.

Two literary pieces, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by, Dylan Thomas and Because I Could Not Stop for Death by, Emily Dickinson are both poems that discuss the topic of death. While there are some similarities and comparisons between the two poems, when it comes to the themes, both poets writing styles are quite different from one another which makes each poem unique. Thomas and Dickinson both use identical figurative language devices and other literature symbolisms as they explain their main themes which contrasts the differences to the concept of death. These distinct variations between poems are apparent in both the form, and how the choice of words is used in the poems. Dickinson and Thomas have presented two different ideas on the topic and concept of death. The poems are well distinguished literature devices, they share minor similarities and differences between each other and how they present the meaning of death to a toll.

     After evaluating my perception of The Last Night that She Lived, by Emily Dickinson. The message in this poem is we take life for granted and we don’t appreciate it until we are threatened with losing it. Emily used what seems to me as free verse with no apparent rhyme but alliteration at times. This is a Narrative poem that tells a story about a death of a young woman.

Emily Dickinson is perhaps one of the most intriguing American poets studied. The remote look in her eyes mirror her life, which she mostly spent secluded in her home in Amherst, Massachusetts. While leading an outwardly reclusive life, she unleashes the faculties of her mind in her powerful poetry. She addresses compelling themes such as death, depression, human despair, individual capability, and the art of poetry. Her feelings on these subjects emerge in her poems, but her exact thoughts are difficult to uncover since her poetry is so highly enigmatic. Likewise, the subject matter of Christianity in her poetry remains one of the most inconsistent of Dickinson’s recurring themes. Emily Dickinson posses an uncanny ability to wrestle down the perfect diction, thus creating worlds of hope, despair, faith, and endless questioning.Through her use of imagery, Dickinson displays her linguistic prowess and the intricacies of language.

     Emily Dickinson is one of the most famous authors in American History, and a good amount of that can be attributed to her uniqueness in writing. In Emily Dickinson's poem 'Because I could not stop for Death,' she characterizes her overarching theme of Death differently than it is usually described through the poetic devices of irony, imagery, symbolism, and word choice.

Power and powerlessness are prominent themes common in both Emily Dickinson’s and Phillip Larkin’s poems. The idea of whom or what is in control and how power is obtained are explored. Both poets predominantly explore the idea that power primarily belongs to a male figure. However, in Larkin’s ‘Send No Money’ the speaker is portrayed to be powerless against an abstract idea rather than a physical, human being as shown in Dickinson’s ‘754’. This shows how both poets have many similarities in the manner in which they write about power and powerlessness. Both poets explore that ideas of power and powerlessness but one aspect of their writing that cannot be ignored is the time the poems were written in and the perspective they were written from. Dickinson is writing her poems from the eyes of a woman in the 19th century. Whereas Larkin wrote his poems around a century later when the times had changed and society had evolved. His poems are of course from the viewpoint of a traditional male writing around the 1950’s and onwards. It is interesting to note that neither poet married during their lifetime. Emily Dickinson was a recluse who preferred to live a solitary life and avoided interaction with outside people. Phillip Larkin could not commit himself into a long relationship. They both experienced loneliness in life where they couldn’t experience the struggle for power in relationships meaning they experienced power in different aspects. Dickinson was a deeply religious person