The Road Not Taken Analysis Essays

The traveler studies the paths, looking down each as far as he can. After noticing the trails are quite similar, he takes one. He states that he would save the other trail for another day, yet he knows that trails lead to more trails, and he doubts that he will ever come back. The poem closes with the man imagining himself looking back on his decision with a sigh,

The speaker says that both roads are equally beautiful, and also equally worn. He says he will leave the first path for another day, then admits to himself: “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back.” (14-15) The speaker never fully rules out taking the road less traveled, and never officially denies that he will come back. Yet, he admits to himself that one choice leads to another and most likely he will never journey back to the fork and be faced with the same decision. The speaker anticipates the regret he will feel when “telling this with a sigh” (16) based on his decision no matter which path he takes. But in the last stanza the speaker argues he should not feel any regret because it does not matter either way. The narrator says how he will someday look back and claim "with a sigh" that choosing the "one less traveled ... made all the difference." He knows that he will comfort himself by saying that the choices he has made have lead to the place he is in his life, when, in reality, his position is a combination of his choices and chance. He knows that his choice was really arbitrary, and his destiny will likely not be impacted his outcome either way. In this last stanza, the speaker acknowledges the stereotype of the

On the last two lines, an extended metaphor was used, “Yet knowing how way leads on to way”, “I doubted if I should ever come back”. These last two lines of the third stanza, heightens the attention of readers that he hopes that he could try the other path as the traveller knows ‘how one road can lead to another’. Also, the traveller is having doubts as it is impossible to retrace steps as other choices or decisions can lead to other options in life. The third stanza raises the awareness to readers as he decided to stick with the decision that he made but still with a bit of regrets.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” “We must take time to define our own path. Too quickly we can find the world defining it for us.” (Anonymous) These are just a few quotes that describe how I feel about the paths I have taken and choose to take and the decisions I make. I don’t feel that our decisions are left to fate or that we don’t always think about the choices we make and the consequences those choices will have on us. Ekramul Haque

Frost uses the debating between the two roads to show the reader the two choices that are presented to him and how those two choices offer countless amount of possibilities. There are multiple different ways to decipher the poem, but Frost connects with the reader in the sense that no matter what road is taken, another road will later replace the past road. Frost begins to notice one of the two roads looks more worn down than the other, “Though as for that the passing there had worn them really about the same” this is representing real-life traumas and can show the decision making process when choosing between two options. Looking down one of the roads of life before actually following the trail shows a different perspective and point of view from the basic stand point of only seeing a problem one way and never seeing the problem or decision from another point of view. Frost decides in the end to take one of the paths and says he will take the second path another day although he may never go back to the starting point of his journey. It is more than just human instinct to not want to take the more unnatural or harmful pathway; it is easier to take the cleaner path so that the problem will be over with faster and Frost depicts this problem perfectly in the form of a short poem.

“The Road Not Taken” is a very popular poem written by the renowned poet Robert Frost. This poem tells a story of a man caught between two diverged roads and uncertain on which path he should take. These two roads are quite obviously metaphors for the different paths you can take in life, but what is less obvious is which path the narrator should take, and which he should leave behind. Throughout the poem the narrator is constantly second guessing himself on which of the two roads he should take. He reassures himself by saying that one of the roads seemed more grassy than the other and also seemed less traveled upon. But shortly after he reveals that in actuality the two roads were both quite the same. In the end he finally makes a decision but shows much regret after making it. This poem may not be much of a fairytale but Robert Frost does have a theme behind this story, which is to make the best of your opportunities. Since you can obviously not be able to see the

Both could be perceived as right while both could also be perceived as wrong. In reality though, one is definitely more convincing than the other. The speaker in the poem was talking about what they did end up doing and what path they ended up taking but, the speaker did take the wrong road and they regret it. That interpretation is the more convincing one of the two. The line in the last stanza that says, “I shall be telling this with a sigh,” is a major clue. In that line, the speaker is talking about how in the future, they will tell people that they took the right path because they’re ashamed of their first decision. But it’s not even more convincing, it’s the right interpretation out of these too. The other interpretation about how the speaker took the one less travelled and that that has made all the difference, is flat out wrong. We know from evidence, and lots of it, that they didn’t make the right

In “The Road Not Taken” the speaker stands in the woods trying to decide which road to take at a fork in the path because both paths are filled with levees and brush. The speaker finally chooses one path, telling himself that he will take the other path another day even though he knows that he might not ever be able to do that. In the end he admits that if he would have taken the other road that might have made a difference in his life today.

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

But also he is showing signs of regret in case the path he decides to take leads to sadness. He decides to take the second path but he wishes he could come back and try the other road just in case when he stated he “kept the first for another day”. In life when faced with difficult choices, we tend to think that we can always come back and try it again later but sometimes that isn’t the case. There are some choices you make in life there is no going

In “The Road Not Taken”, we see the narrator, Robert Frost, comes upon a fork in the road while walking through the yellow wood. He considers both paths and decides that each path is equally well-traveled and they both catch his attention. After choosing one of the roads, the narrator tells himself that he will come back to this fork one day to try the other road. But, he realizes that this is highly unlikely that he will ever will come back to this specific point in time because his choice of path will simply lead to other forks in the road and other decisions. The narrator ends on a somewhat nostalgia trip, wondering how different things would have been had he chosen the other path.

In the fifth line of the fourth stanza, Frost admits that though he might want to come back to the path one day, he knows he never will. He goes on to declare that he shall be saying it “with a sigh” (Frost 16). Interestingly, he ends the short poem by stating that he “took the road less traveled by and it made all the difference” (Frost 19-20). Consequently, this conclusion creates confusion in the mind of the reader. Was the road less traveled, or were the two roads the same? It seems that at different points of his life, the author realizes different aspects of the two roads.

Furthermore, the path the he decided upon visually seemed to be not as heavily used for travel; although, after reconsideration the man realizes that both paths were realistically equal. The traveler desired to choose the path that was less traveled; however, neither route in the woods was able to be distinguished as the one that was voyaged on the least. The traveler intends to revisit the place where the road diverges into two, but in his mind he is aware that he will never be presented with the same opportunity again. Therefore, it was wishful thinking of the traveler to believe that he had traveled on the path that was less traveled, and he planned to justify his choice with the original descriptions that he shared with the reader. Overall, the imagery in the poem executes the idea that it is a behavioral trait of humankind to prove that a past decision was valid because the two passageways are depicted differently through vivid language, but the traveler later states that the roads “equally lay” in his presence.

The poem starts off with the title “The Road Not Taken.” At first sight this title could be used as foreshadow that the following poem will be about making a mistake, not making the right choice (not taking the right road) therefore establishing a gloomy, mournful tone. It promises that the poem will be about a road not taken or the road that the author does take “because it was grassy and wanted wear.” Another possible foreshadow of the title is that in the poem it does not matter which

He conveys his uncertainty of which path he should take, and compares the two roads in order to convince himself which one he should take. Up until this point, his tone is neither optimistic nor pessimistic and does not imply whether his choice was a good one or a bad one. However, reading the last stanza, you understand that the speaker’s tone has changed to a more satisfied one. He is pleased with the road he took, as it has “made all the difference.” From a different perspective, upon reading the fourth stanza, you can understand that the speaker has changed to a morose, and possibly regretful tone, and in the first line, the speaker states that he “shall be telling this with a sigh.” This shows that the speaker is convinced he regrets his choice. At the start of the poem when the speaker mentions “yellow wood”, the color yellow sets you into a warm, kind mood. Then, throughout the first two stanzas the speaker is trying to pick which road to take. This makes the readers want to know which path he is taking and why. This puts the readers in a mood of anticipatory, or in the mood to find out more and to find out what will happen