The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost

Robert Frosts “The Road Not Taken” is more symbolic of a choice one must make in their life in attempt to foresee the outcome before reaching the end, than it is about choosing the right path in the woods.

The analysis of “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost has been up for debate since the poem release in 1916. It is known to be one of the most frequently misinterpreted poems of all time, and even Robert Frost himself has said the poem is “tricky” to comprehend (The). When analyzing this poem many readers tend to focus only on the last lines of the poem and get caught in a trap of selective-interpretation. Quite a few people after reading Robert Frost’s poem firmly conclude that this poem is about non-conformity and individualism, however, that is not the case. Robert Frost’s poem is meant to be analyzed line by line for a complete interpretation. Readers can conclude that the poem represents making choices in life, but that is not the

The poetic techniques were symbolism, imagery, and tone. Symbolism is the most powerfully used technique due to the fact a good number of lines located in this poem is used to signify a certain object or idea related to our life or today’s world. Imagery in the sense that you can visualize the path, the yellow wood, the undergrowth, the divergence; it is all made very vivid. Frost did this throughout; you know trying to stimulate the reader’s mood using one’s senses. In this poem, imagery permits the reader to imagine the scene that this poem takes place in resulting in an enhanced understanding of the theme. The tone Frost’s work presents is an insecure attitude which allows the theme to be brought out due to the fact the theme relates to a dilemma in one’s life. These techniques strongly aid in the revealing of this specific theme.

So I decided to write an explication essay on the poem “The Road Not Taken”. The poem is by Robert Frost and it tells the story about a man who is thinking about something he had done before. Even though what he did wasn’t looked as being good or bad, it was indicated the decision he made had an outcome that caused a shift in his life.

Robert Frost was born March 26, 1874 at San Francisco, California and died January 29, 1963 at Boston, Massachusetts. Frost was an educator and poet. He is widely known for his poetry; some of Frost’s famous work includes The Road Not Taken, Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, Mending Wall, and Out, Out─. Out, Out─ tells a story of a young boy cutting wood to help provide for his family. He then acquires an injury on his hand by the saw. The boy ends up dying due to the severity of his wound. His family returns to their duties. This poem uses many elements to emphasize death. Robert Frost uses the poetic elements of imagery, figures of speech, and symbolism to illustrate the theme of death in the poem Out, Out─.

The existence of poetry as an artform predates literacy itself. Over the course of history, poetry grew from a verbal form of art, existing mainly in religious hymns, to becoming the universal “language of the heart”. The work of William Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe, some of the most notable poets of history, has resonated with generations of Americans. Although they lived in a Pre-industrial world, their work remains powerful because the themes expressed in their artwork can still be applied to modern society. On the contrary, protruding among this group of ancient poets is Robert Frost, whose modern work remains just as powerful, shaping generations through his questions of existence, and depiction of loneliness in an indifferent universe. One of Frost's most celebrated poems: The Road Not Taken, is influential not only in the literary world, but also within American culture. The poems subsequent ripple through American life is analyzed by David Orr In his essay The Most Misread Poem in America. Here, Orr argues that the misread of The Road Not Taken magnifies the underlying issues in society’s understanding of both Frost and poetry as a whole.

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.

?The Road Not Taken? was structured by Frost to form four quintains. The majority of the lines contain nine syllables. This structure is maintained through out the poem. The stanzas are arranged like that of a thought. One continues to undermine the other, much like decision making. Our first thoughts are always second-guessed by our second and so forth until we make our final decision, which cancels out all that was thought before. This is what Frost manages to do in the arrangement of his stanzas.

"The Road Not Taken" was written with standard, simple diction. The most complex word used is "trodden"(12). The majority of the lines contain nine syllables. This structure is maintained throughout the entire poem. The stanzas are arranged like that of a thought. One continues to undermine the other, much like decision making. Our first thoughts are always second-guessed by our second and so forth until we make our final decision, which cancels out all that was thought before. This is what Frost manages to do in the arrangement of his stanzas.

Consequently, the results can be life altering. The power of choice is exemplified in Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken.” In this poem, Frost uses tone, imagery, and irony to assist in showing the effects of a decision.

Thesis: In the poem “A Road Not Taken”, Robert Frost shares how sometimes in life one has to make decisions rather they’re good or bad. However there are consequences following one’s decisions and choices. One can use their second chance by looking forward and choosing to take the right paths in life.

Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Frost influenced my thorough love of different styles of literature, particularly poetry. To the masses, Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Frost only share job titles, but the two poets share many similarities within their writing. Personally, I read pieces from both authors over the course of my schooling experience. I admired Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken” from a young age, and that particular stole my heart since the first read. “The Raven,” became one of my favorite poems further down my schooling career, with its clear ominous tone that symbolizes much of Poe’s writing. Frost’s and Poe’s works may not seem similar, aside from the section in which their books reside within a library, but their work resembles each other’s quite well. Frost’s writing serves as a better introduction to poetry due to his easily relatable themes, his background connects to everyday audiences, and his use of modern language.

One very effective method alike from Shakespeare, that Frost uses, is Denotation and Connotation, which in conjunction with symbolism give the poem richness and color. Symbolism is used, when the author wants to suggest a certain mood, rather than blasting it out, the author hints the readers throughout symbols.Denotation is what the dictionary says a word means, and connotation, is what a word can make you think of. For example, the denotation of the word “Road” is: A long, narrow stretch with a smoothened or paved surface, made for traveling by motor vehicle or carriage. While the connotation of this word, is what you choose to do with your life, are you going to choose the path everybody takes, or are you going to forge your own path in life. So rather than just telling us that the two roads

Robert Frosts’ “The Road Not Taken” was written in 1916 and is one of his most famous poems. He uses a rhyme scheme of A, B, A, A, B in every stanza. In this poem, the speaker has come to “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood (line1)” and is not sure of which road to take. He would like to take both roads although he cannot. Regret seems to creep in when he states “and sorry I could not travel both (line2). He looks down both roads and chooses one over the other “Because it was grassy and wanted wear (line8)”. Frost uses alliteration with the repetition of the “W” in line 8. “So he was choosing between two roads, or futures, that were different but potentially equally good (Shmoop).” In reality both these roads are pretty much the same. The

The great poet Robert Frost was asked if the poem, The Road Not Taken, was about an experience in the poet 's life: He answered that a poem is never about an experience, it is an experience. If you succeed in determining exactly what Dylan meant in “Mr. Tambourine Man,” you will have succeeded in destroying it. This is the song that marks the change where Dylan moves on from the public world of overt political protest songs to a focus on the individual consciousness, which I’d like to argue is another more subtle form of protest. “Mr. Tambourine Man” is rich with expressions of emotion. With a new personal approach to songwriting, Dylan takes feelings that he was perhaps dealing with at the time, absorbs them, and artfully crafts them into mysterious lyrics that are simply enamoring. The song has a bright, expansive melody accompanied by Dylan’s jaunty vocals that is beautifully mesmerizing. The song is about the feeling of being trapped in a miserable existence and the desperate yearning for freedom from an individual’s own personal hell. It is about the universal need to escape one’s troubles, no matter what the means are, as long as it allows you to forget, deal, and hopefully transcend. It has become famous in particular for its surrealistic imagery, influenced by artists as diverse as French poet Arthur Rimbaud and Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini. The lyrics call on the title character to play a song and the narrator will follow. Interpretations of the