“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the road less traveled by, and that has made
all the difference.” ("Robert Frost - Poems, Biography, Quotes") Many people know this line, either because they had to read the poem The Road not Taken in school, or because they have heard it scholars use it in reference to choices in life . Sadly though, quite a few people don’t know who wrote this amazing work of art and most do not know his back story. The poet who wrote this line is named Robert Frost. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize a record of four times and was called, by John F. Kennedy, and American hero. His works are acknowledged around the world but most Americans take no interest in him, even though he was born and raised in the United
…show more content…
Frost’s life was filled with misfortune, but his life did not begin as such. Frost’s journey began in the bustling city of San Francisco, California on March 26, 1874. ("Robert Frost biography") Frost lived there with his mother, father, and sister. Frost was an inquisitive young boy whose life was filled a with curiosity for nature. ("Frost's early poems") He was very happy until, at age eleven, his first tragedy struck. Frost’s father William Frost, a journalist and a large influence in Robert’s life, died from tuberculosis. ("Robert Frost - Poems, Biography, Quotes") Young Frost and his family left soon after to move in with his paternal grandfather in Lawrence, Massachusetts.(“Poet Robert Frost”) Frost’s grandfather encouraged him throughout his schooling in Lawrence to get better at what ever he wanted to do and be passionate about it. Of course for Frost, this was poetry. After his graduation in 1892, Frost attended the prestigious Dartmouth University and later attended Harvard University, both of which he dropped out of in order to help his family. (“Poet Robert Frost”) In the interim between his colleges, Frost married Elinor …show more content…
Frost’s purpose of writing this poem may have been to give us more of an insight to the frailty of our human lives and to uncover the blindness that many of us have. In this poem, Frost uses a winter to symbolise our life and the stars to symbolise or being. ("PoPoPoems") He begins the poem with a tone of wondrousness, expressing our beauty and how, like the stars, we shine so brightly, but he continues on with a more morose and sad tone to say that we, as human being, are often blind to our wisdom and knowledge we possess. The theme throughout is that the speaker realises that we are fragile and we often miss the meaning of our lives because we are caught up in all our faults like the poem says in lines 11 and 12, “Minerva’s snow-white marble eyes without the gift of sight”. ("PoPoPoems") Stars is a lyric poem that has a abcb rhyme scheme in each stanza. Frost uses much alliteration, for example in line 1 and line 4, “countlessly they congregate” and “when wintry winds do blow.” There are many sense devices in Stars such as simile (line 3), personification (line 1), hyperbole (line 3), paradox (line 11 and 12), and symbolism (stars, winter, and Minerva’s snow-white marble eyes). I personally think that Stars is a wonderful symbolism for how we live our lives; we often have huge dreams and ambitions that shine brightly inside of us but we often get swept away by the troubles
“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” - John Muir. Nature is unpredictable and you never know what you’ll see when you are exploring it. Robert Frost used nature as something to help him describe his feelings in his poems, and showed how much nature can affect someone. Creative writers when surrounded by nature can make something worth reading about it. Frost just so happened to be one of those creative writers and that made him a great success.
When his father died in 1885 he moved to Massachusetts with his mom and sister. He spent his whole life in the Massachusetts area. “Frost attended high school in that state, and then Dartmouth College, but remained less than one semester” (Michalowski). “At the age of thirty-eight, Frost decided to move his family to England. While in England his first book, A Boy’s Will, was published in 1913. A few years later he returned to America where his second book, North of Boston, was published.” (Michalowski) “Massachusetts and other New England areas were the setting for the majority of Frost’s poetry. The nature in the New England area played a big role in his life and influenced his poetry a lot.” (Sweeny and Lindroth 7)
Robert Frost is a pastoral poet. His love for rural life revealed in his work. He incorporates major themes: one's life choices, isolation, and nature in his works.
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.
Robert was born in San Francisco, California on March 26th, 1874. His parents, William Prescott Frost and Isabelle Moodie were both teachers (“Robert” 1). William and Isabelle met while they were both teaching in Pennsylvania and fell in love. In 1884 William Frost died, leaving his wife and son on their own. The family struggles financially since they were only receiving one check instead of two (Encyclopedia 1). Throughout elementary and middle school, Robert surprisingly didn’t like going to school. He would have rather been playing football or baseball with his friends. His mother made him realize the importance of an education just in time for high school (American 1).
In Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”, Frost shows the everyday human struggle to make a choice that could change the course of one’s life. In his poem, a person has the choice to take one road or the other. One road is worn out from many people taking it, and the other is barely touched, for fewer have taken that road. Throughout the poem, the speaker learns that just because so many other people have done one thing, or walked one way, does not mean everyone has to. Sometimes you just have to go your own way.
Elinor White, and they were co-valedictorian's. He proposed to Elinor but she refused his original proposal. Frost went on to attend Dartmouth College and Elinor to St. Lawrence University. Frost left Dartmouth, without graduating, and worked on his writing. He was published for the first time, in 1894, in The Independent. After Elinor graduated Frost proposed again, and the pair were married. They got married in Lawrence, MA on December 19, 1895 and together they had six children whose names were Elliot, Lesley, Carol, Irma, Majorie, and Elinor. He later returned to college at Harvard, where he studied for two years until he had to leave due to illness. In 1912, Frost;s grandfather gave Robert and his family a farm in Derry, New Hampshire where the family became poultry farmers. After 12 years, the family made the decision to move to England ("Robert Frost Biography.com"). Along with writing poems he was also a playwright and enjoyed writing plays just as much as he liked writing poems but did not see the same success in play writing as he saw in poetry Robert Frost is mostly known as a famous poet who is often quoted; for example, a famous quote is, "two roads diverged in a yellow
The early and later life of Robert Frost was entailed with many hardships that influenced a variety of themes and key concepts within his works such as thematic ideas surrounding the simple pleasures taken for granted in life until they disappear, evident in Frost's poem "Birches," and city life opposed to farm life, evident in "Acquainted with the Night." Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California to William Prescott Frost Jr and Isabelle Moody Frost. The two had on other child, Jeanie Frost, in 1876 when their son was two. Frost childhood was pervaded with hardships stemming mostly from the actions of his father. Frost's father was an alcoholic who drank and gambled the family's funds into oblivion while exercising
Robert Frost, one of the most well-known and well respected American poets, he wrote a lot about rural life in New England and how the lifestyle differed from here in America. Robert Lee Frost was born March 26, 1874 and he passed away on January 29, 1963 from complications from prostate surgery. He was born in San Francisco, California, and he died in Boston, Massachusetts at the age of 88. He was married to Elinor Miriam White (1895-1938) and they had a total of six children. Robert Frost’s children’s were named, Elliot (1896-1904), Lesley (1899-1983), Carol (1902-1940), Irma (1903-1967), Majorie (1905-1934), Elinor Bettina (1907).
The night symbolized death, and the walk was the person's journey to find their lost life. This poem was somewhat disturbing to me. I thought of a lost soul, thirsting to finish a mission that was not completed in life. Frost depicts death in a frightening manner with the contents of this piece of work.
He grew up in an abusive home with an abusive and alcoholic father. His family constantly moved homes. His sister suffered from a mental illness, and Robert Frost himself had severe anxiety. This rough and unstable childhood caused him to seek stability, which he found by reading and listening to fantasy stories (Fagan). “Frost's childhood was not idyllic, but Frost’s love of Mother Goose, of his family, and of nature, baseball, and language would set the stage for his character and his poetry”(Fagan). His poetry would start to consist of nature, death, and acceptance. These themes were further explored following his secret wedding with his wife Elinor White and their children. They together had six children, Elliott, Lesley, Carol, Irna, Marjorie, and Elinor. Out of his six children, two died in childhood, one in childbirth, one stillborn, and one of suicide (Fagan). Although his life was filled with death, in his earlier poems, “he does not indulge his grief in his poetry, preferring the stoic pose of neoclassical elegy” this is seen through his poem “Out, Out--” (“Robert Frost”). This poem was created after hearing about a death of a local boy in New Hampshire in
Initially, Robert Frost’s complication of “The Road Not Taken” begins with the title of the work itself. Often mistaken for The Road Less Traveled, the title is undoubtedly ironic to the actual facts written in the poem. For example, the title suggests clearly that one road faced has been worn, and the other not traveled. However, the poem clouds the meaning of the title. As he stands carefully stripping the paths of their qualities, he must discern between the first and the latter; the speaker gazes down the second path and announces:
Everyone has morals in life. Weather learned from nature, family, or past experiences. Robert Frost is well known for using different themes to teach morals in his poems. He uses imagery, emotions, different views, symbolism, and ever nature, to help create an image in one’s mind. The morals that these different types of themes create will make the reader face decisions and consequences as if they were in the poem themselves. His morals can be found in the poems, “The Road Not Taken,” “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” “Out, Out,” and “Acquainted with the Night.” Robert Frost’s poetry uses different themes to create morals which readers will use in daily life. “He is fairly taciturn about what happens to us after death, partly because he finds so
Robert Lee Frost, born in 1874, grew up in California. He was an extraordinary student, and ended his high school career as one of the valedictorians. He was very intelligent, and even went on to Dartmouth College, though he did not graduate. He was married to his former high school classmate Elinor White in 1895. Together they gave birth to six children. Later in life he attended Harvard College. Robert Frost was known for his love of nature, and portrays it in many of his poems. For part of his life he worked as a farmer, which could have contributed to his love for nature. Though Frost clearly states, “I am not a nature poet. There is almost always a person in my poems” (frostfriends.org). Frost obviously does not want people to think that he writes strictly about nature. He wants others to see the meaning behind his poetry, as well as the “human psychology” hidden underneath his poems. Frost did love nature though, not to be mistaken. He did use nature a lot throughout his poetry, he just did not want people to skim the surface of his poems and think they were about nature when they
In order to understand where Robert Frost is coming from in his poetry it is important to learn about the experiences in his life. Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco. His father was from