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The Road Not Taken And Acquainted With The Night

Decent Essays

Journeys, whether physical, spiritual or emotional are a complex concept to fully understand. Often these types of journeys are intertwined together and are employed by poets in their poems to provoke readers into new understandings of themselves and others. These notions are explored through Robert Frost’s poems “The Road Not Taken”, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “Acquainted With The Night”. Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American Pulitzer Prize winning poet. Frost was a deep twentieth century writer that affiliated his world with his poetry and hence achieved unparalleled popularity and critical acclaim. Frost composed numerous works of poetry that reflected the same central idea with a deeper meaning. …show more content…

The traveller finds himself on a fork in the road and wishes that he could travel both. This being physically and figuratively a non-possibility, is recognised by the traveller and the idea is immediately rejected. The slight contradiction can be noted in the second stanza when one road is described as “grassy and wanted wear” and soon after the traveller conveys that the two roads are worn in almost the same manner. In the second stanza, Robert Frost utilises personification giving the road human characteristics. The "wanted wear" is a distinctively human characteristic and consequently personifies the path, giving it desires. This is purposefully done as the path itself embodies the act of making a choice which is also uniquely human. Frost builds on the/enhances the imagery created in this poem in the third stanza and the traveller distinguishes that the leaves on both roads fell recently and had not been marched upon and suggests that he should return and take the first road another time. The traveller is not sure whether he would be able to accomplish this desire as he comes to a realisation that life is quite short and as the decision he made would lead to other choices and

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