On March 26, 1874, Robert Lee Frost was born to Isabelle Moodie and William Prescott Frost Junior. He was named after Robert E. Lee a general of the Confederate army. Frost was also not very religious. According to Frost, God has played a joke on him and he says, "Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on thee, and I'll forgive thy great big joke on me" (C. 5). Frost graduated from a school in Lawrence in 1892. He did have some college, but he eventually dropped out. He later married Elinor White in 1895 soon after his work My Butterfly: An Elegy was published. They had five children together. I picked Robert Frost because of how he expressed life's choices in The Road Not Taken. I also picked him because I have been reading his poems since I was a child along with poems by Shel Silverstein.
Frost's key theme is human decision making. In his experience, most people choose the easiest choice they can. The easy road he speaks of is, "grassy and wanted wear" (8). While, the harder, more difficult road is the opposite in appearance, many people do not choose this road. People make decisions their whole lives, and depending on which choice is chosen can not only reflect on themselves but also on other people. What he is implying is that the more difficult road will not be
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The road symbolizes the choice Frost or any person has to make at some point in life. Frost is given two roads he can choose from, the first being the easy one and the second being the hard one. Many people choose the easy road, but Frost said he, “took the one less traveled by” (19). He chose the difficult road which is full of challenges and hardships. At the end reflecting back on his decision, he sounds as if he is weary and tired after taking that path, but he also sounds proud that he did take that path. He accomplished what many did not want to just because they knew it would be
The speaker decides on a path. In lines 16-20, Frost writes “I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. As I mentioned earlier, the speaker sighs in line 16, wishing he could have taken both roads. He opted to choose the grassy road that wanted wear (line 9). The speaker reflects back on this decision, noting that his choice has made all the difference in his life. To me, this last line reflects contentment and gratification in his earlier life choice.
One example would be where the traveler comes to fork in the road and has to make a decision to either take the path that everyone takes or the one that is barely used. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— /I took the one less traveled by,/ and that has made all the difference” (Frost). In his mind, Frost begins thinking of the pros and cons of each path. The one path is used regularly, which must mean it is safer and has a better walking path. The other path is very rarely used which could mean it is more dangerous, but it would have a lot more adventure awaiting. Ultimately, Frost decides to travel on the road less taken as a sense of adventure. Sadly, as soon he gets further down the road, Frost begins contemplating whether or not to go back and take the other road. This is a reflection back to his life where he is faced with a problem and has to make a decision. Always wondering what would have been if he had taken the other path. It is also the time when Frost decides to return to the United States. Since this poem has been interpreted by many as a coming of age poem, many speakers at graduations have read this poem to represent the path that those graduating must now choose as a new phase of their life begins. Other critics believe it is not a coming of age poem. Many believe the poem was simply a letter Frost wrote to his friend, and fellow poet, Edward Thomas about time they had spent
Discovering more of Frost's past life, it's no surprise that most of his poems revolve around the five stages of grief and loss. In understanding the process of grief , the poem "The Road Not Taken" seems to implement the stage of acceptance. In the first stanza, we are approached with two decisions "in a yellow wood", yellow meaning intellect, energy and wisdom . While Wood meaning tree, implying growth or a rapid increase in something. Tree's usually turn yellow in the fall, the season fall meaning death or dying, typically referring to a tragedy. Already knowing a positive decision will be made based on a rapid increase in death, we then turn to the next turning point "Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for the passing there had worn them about the same...".
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
Frost shows the readers that it is hard to choose something without knowing what will be the result, thus he wants to try both of the options to decide on something, when he says “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,/ And sorry I could not travel both”. Whole poem is constructed of this metaphor, and every line refers to something in life. In the last part where Frost says, “I took the one less traveled by” he implies the idea that people wish to be different from others, thus they are prone to choose the option which had not been chosen by many other people. Instead of saying that he was having hard time deciding on a thing to do, Frost chose to use the metaphor of a road, which forced the readers to use their imagination to understand the real meaning behind what he
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 was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, California. He spent the first 11 years of his life there, until his journalist father, William Prescott Frost Jr., died of tuberculosis. Following his father's passing, Frost moved with his mother and sister, Jeanie, to the town of Lawrence, Massachusetts. They moved in with his grandparents, and Frost attended Lawrence High School, where he met his future love and wife, Elinor White, who was his co-valedictorian when they graduated in 1892.
Robert Frost writes his poems with a connection to nature. Frost though grew up in an urban setting. Though in the video “A Conversation with Robert Frost”, Frost stated that of the jobs he had growing up farming impacted him the most. Farming might have jump started his fascination with nature at a young age. By being raised in such an urban setting and not being as in touch with nature, Frost gained a fascination for it. Frost’s attitude towards nature is that of wonder and appreciation. In frost’s poem “The Tuft of Flowers” it shows the theme of nature, such as “But he turned first, and led my eye to look / At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,” (21-22). In his poems, it is often mentioned the relationship between nature and man. This
Robert Frost, an American poet known for his depicting the complexity of society and philosophy within his poetry. Professor Cole says that Frost is the scariest poet in U.S. literature and this is something I agree with. However when I mean that Frost is scary, I mean that he frightens his readers with his realistic views of the world. Frost uses his psychological complexity and dark views of the world as his base for his work. America lives on the American Dream which is the model that every United States citizen will have an equal chance to accomplish success and wealth through solid effort, purpose, and ingenuity. Frost’s work shines the light that the theory of American Dream is nonexistent. Frost shows people that not everything is sunshine
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
To begin, Frost writes “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both, And be one traveler, long I stood” (Frost 1-3). These lines of the poem are an analogy to a difficult decision the narrator had to make. As you can tell, he had two choices, not two roads precisely, and he was sorry he had to make this decision. This line supports the theme because part of growing up is being faced with a demanding problem where you ultimately make a choice. When you realize you have to choose, this leads to uncertainty.
Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco. When his father died, he moved to Massachusetts with his family to be closer to his grandparents. He loved to stay active through sports and activities such as trapping animals and climbing trees. He married his co- valedictorian, Elinor Miriam White, in 1895. He dropped out of both Dartmouth and Harvard in his lifetime. Robert and Elinor settled on a farm in Massachusetts which his grandfather bought him, and it was one of the many farms on which he would live in throughout his life. Frost spend the next 9 years writing poetry while poultry farming. When poultry farming didn’t work out, he went back to teaching English. He moved to England in 1912 and became friends with many people who were also in the writing business. After moving back to America in 1915, Frost bought a farm in New Hampshire and began reading his poems aloud at public
Almost every line in the poem “The Road Not Taken” hit home with me. In the third stanza, Frost talks about how the narrator chose one path and then second guesses himself. “Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.” This line made me think of my own life and decisions. I had to pick a road, and stick with it. However, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t doubt my decision and think about what would have happened if I took the other road, just as the narrator in The Road Not Taken did. In the last stanza, Frost takes it home with the lines “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” Again, the final lines sparked an image in my mind of my own situation in life and how the road I took really has made all the
There is one day where at a point, one must make a life choice deciding what’s ahead of them. In the poem, “The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost, shows that a person is in the middle of the woods with a crossroad of two separate roads. The person was unsure which to choose, so looked down at both roads and chose one. His choice of which road to choose reflect his next choice of the less travelled by, which was worth it. In the poem, Frost uses symbolism, mood, and imagery as a way to show how one feels when in the middle of a life decision.
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