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What Does Robert Frost Use Of Contradiction

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Robert Frost is an American poet from San Francisco, California. He is a four time Pulitzer Prize winner and is known for depicting the everyday rural New England environment. He has written poems such as “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “The Road Not Taken,”, and “The Oven Bird.” In the poem “The Road Not Taken” Frost uses Contradiction, metaphor, and Symbolism to depict a fork in the road representing choices and pathways in life. Frost does this to emphasize the indecisiveness of people and to show that decisions can have great importance. Frost also wrote this to help a close friend decide whether or not to go to war. In the poem “The Road Not Taken” Frost uses contradiction to show the decision of which path to take was …show more content…

One of these examples of contradiction is the conditions of the paths. The traveler sees two paths that diverge from one another in a grassy wooded area. One of these paths is more worn and trodden than the other implying that it has been traveled more heavily than the other. Upon coning closer to the two paths the traveler notices that both paths are actually worn just about the same. Which means that each path has probably been traveled by about the same number of people. Even though the paths are worn the same the traveler still the one less traveled by (Ellis 5). These two things clearly are contradictory. A related example of contradiction in this poem is that of what the traveler will tell people whenever the time comes. The traveler will tell the people that he took the path less traveled by even though he knows that he has not. This is not so much of contradiction as much as it is of lying, but it does have contradictory aspects. Another example of contradiction in this poem is the possibility of revisiting the paths. As Frost decides which path to take Frost takes into consideration the possibility of revisiting the paths. Frost knows that it is possible to wander back to these paths and have the …show more content…

There are a few examples of symbolism in this poem that are noticeable. The first example of symbolism in this poem is the fork in the road. The fork in the road is meant to symbolize an important decision in life (Montiero). There is always a decision to be made when at a fork in the road and because of this Frost uses this common fork on a forest road to symbolize something much larger than which path to take. This fork in the road does not simply symbolize a decision of which road a traveler should take to get to the set destination faster, instead it symbolizes a decision of the utmost Importance. A second example of symbolism in “The Road Not Taken” are the two diverging pathways in the woods. These pathways represent roads in life or paths in life. A path is meant to take a person somewhere. A path is part of a journey and in this case Frost uses these pathways to symbolize the paths that we take on the journey of life. These two examples of symbolism go hand in hand in this poem. An important decision in life and the pathways of life to choose from (Tammera 3). Frost’s friend that was contemplating whether to go to war or not was facing a situation just like this one. Thomas came upon a very tough decision or the fork in the story, and had to choose a

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