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“The Road Not Taken” poem is a very famous poem written by Robert Frost; an American poet and writer. This poem is characterised by its simple language and easy meaning, it describes a mood that a person passes through a stage of his life and a conflict when he wants to take a decision about. This conflict and the decision taken declared through the use of metaphors, diction, verb tenses and title. The poem describes a mood that a person passes through a stage of his life.
It gave me confirmation of my thought when I had to choose a path that would change my rest of life.
The poem is a metaphor story, tells of every human being about his age when he reaches a crossroads, he has to choose between the two routes does not know the end of each. It tells about the physical journey of a person travelling along a road and coming to this point. He stands a long time thinking both ways in all the obstacles or facilities in each of them, examines on of them carefully, and then chooses the other, because it is “grassy” and wanted wear”.
In the next verse the traveler realises that both roads are actually worn about the same. Then he states that when one of the two routes is taken, it is difficult to return to the other. The poem is an extended metaphor, he has likened the human’s age in one of its stages with two roads in the forest, and at one point one of them must be selected.
Paths in the woods and forks in a road are classic metaphors for the crises and decisions involved in life. Forks have symbolised the connection between free will and fate. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” is the first line in the first stanza which is a metaphor in which the poet uses the woods to represent life. When standing at the edge of the woods, it is not possible to clearly see what lies ahead, as the view is obstructed by trees and branches. We are free to choose, but we do not know beforehand what we are choosing.
“The Road Not Taken” is written in the first person and uses the personal pronoun “I” to personalise its meaning as an inner journey, which suggests that the reader has direct insight into the poet’s thoughts and feelings. In addition, line 8 in the second stanza, “Because it was grassy and wanted wear,” is an example of personification. The poet speaks in melancholy and sighs about one stage of his life. And I think that the tone of melancholy may be suitable for such poem; this clear from some words, sentences the poet mentioned like; “And sorry I could not travel both”, “I doubted if I should ever come back”, “I shall be telling this with a sigh”, etc. The speaker is revealing a characteristic about human nature. Given the choice between thinking well of ourselves or not – most people would choose to think well of themselves. The form of the poem is a free form, the poet does not follow the traditional rules for writing poetry, the poet does not adhere to one meter, rhyme or rhythm. And I think this format is suitable for this kind of poem. The sequence of the poem was temporal as it began at a certain moment and followed the event until it reached the conclusion.
The poet used five sentences in each section of his poem which was simple sentences, nor did he follow the usual linguistic sequence in most of the sentences of the poem. The poet used the capital letters at the beginning of each sentence in his poem. He also used the commas to indicate the continuation of the previous idea, that punctuation was appropriate for the idea he put in each sentence. The title of the poem can refer to either road because it says that the speaker takes the road “less traveled,” which means the road not taken by most travelers. When the poet choses this “less traveled” road, the other road becomes “the road not taken.” So, the poet did not take the road “less traveled,” he took the road determined by choice and chance. It is interesting to note that this poem may actually present a parallel to the life of Robert Frost. The metaphorical language used by the poet when he likened the choices that man has to do it in a certain stage of his life in two divergent ways in a dense forest, is clearly expressed the situation of any one of us when he wants to pass one of the two paths.
The life is exactly like a passing in a dense forest which we does not know where to go, but when he said “And looked down one as far as I could .. To where it bent in the undergrowth, he meant that standing and thinking carefully before going either way is an expression of the need to think carefully before starting any path. It is irregularly pattern, which gives the poet the flexibility to express his ideas and move from one case to another. The words sound in the poem creates a quiet tone and moves differently at different places in the poem to give that meaning.
Analysis Of The Poem “The Road Not Taken” Written By Robert Frost. (2024, Feb 02). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/analysis-of-the-poem-the-road-not-taken-written-by-robert-frost-essay
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