Robert Frost Essay, Research Paper

Poetry perceives the irrational mysteries and subtle truths, through rational

words. Although it is not true to assume that poetry always emanates its

messages from the arcane land of mysteries, but it is pretty safe to conjecture

that poetry is one of the means, most often utilized, to virtually ground the

invisible and get into the inscrutable. When I started prepping up for this

assignment, I read several poems by different poets. But hardly anything talked

to my heart. At last, I recalled I had read ?The Vanishing Red? by Robert L.

Frost years back in High School and had liked it quite a bit. To put it in a

nutshell, after spending long hours in the library reading Frost?s poems –

which was not an easy task, since Frost has been such a prolific poet -? I

decided to write about ?The Road Not Taken.? Robert Lee Frost, The poet

whose poem I?ll shortly comment upon, was born on March 26, 1874, in San

Francisco, California. After his father?s death in 1885, he moved to New

England and settled in rural Lawrence, Massachusetts. Young Frost experimented

with poetry in his early years at High School. He did so, as well, in Dartmouth

College and Harvard University, which he attended for a brief time. Later, from

1885 to 1912 , as Harold Bloom, a literary critic and a professor of humanities

at the University of Yale writes, Frost took up poultry farming, teaching, and

writing poetry ?often at night at the kitchen table? (13). Only after moving

to England in 1912, Frost kicked off his literary career after publishing ?A

Boy?s Will,? who got a positive review by Ezra pound, the influential

modernist writer of the time (Potter 16). In 1916, Frost publishes his new book

?Mountain Interval,? a set of poems starting with ?The Road Not Taken.?

Bloom writes in his book that the title ?Mountain Interval? suggests the

poems denote, ? pauses in rural landscape to contemplate the isolation,

between settlements, activities and memories, as well as between the self and

the natural world ? (30). Therefore, before reading the poem one can expect

subtle images and connections between the self and the nature. Now that we have

a rudimentary knowledge of the background, and the purveying general mood at the

time and the place this particular poem was written, we?ll try to give an

objective, personal assessment of the poem. We start here with the title of the

poem: The Road Not Taken First, a cursory look at the title tells us that

whatever we?re about to read is given to us in retrospect, because of the verb

tense ?taken.? Second, we can safely deduce that ?Not? involves a choice

that the poet has made. Third, the word ?Road? indicates that there has been

some kind of a journey involved. So we proceed with our reading: Two roads

diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one

traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in

the undergrowth; Here Frost ?the speaker in the poem — introduces his primary

metaphor the ?two roads.? He tells us he is at a point in life, where he has

to make a decision between the ?two roads.? The time is not very propitious

of course, for we know that the speaker is in the ?yellow woods.? Yellow,

taken as a figurative language underlines sallow, acerbic lemon-like state. The

speaker?s regret at his human limitations is quite conspicuous, which reflects

in line that reads ?? sorry I could not travel both [roads] and be one

traveler.? Yet, the choice is not easy, since we know that ?long [he]

stood? before coming to a decision and examined the path ?as far as [he]

could.? The feeling we get here is that the speaker is a mature type, who, to

the best of his ability thinks through and examines stuff thoroughly, before

making any critical move. However, despite his human intellect and prudent

character, the speaker is not able to discern the whole caliber of the journey

ahead, because he can?t see farther than where ?[the road] it bent in the

undergrowth.? James L. Potter, a Ph.D from ahrvard who teaches at the Trinity

College contends that in a way the dearth of information is directly

proportional to the speaker?s environment. The message here is that we are

strongly affected by the company we keep or better the environment we?re in

(Potter 82). So we carry on with our reading: Then took the other, as just as

fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted

wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

It seems remarkably interesting the Speaker?s word choice ?other [road]?

rather than using something like the first road or/and the second road. Indeed,

when referring to the ?other [road]? the speaker unequivocally tells us that

it was ?as just and fair.? Can we say that the speaker is being ambivalent,

or, rather, no matter which road he?d choose, he?d always be thinking about

?the other? one? The speaker also seems to be little undecided. In fact,

?having perhaps the better claim? leaves the reader hung in the air. Was he

wary of the determining factors behind his choice? And if he was, why did he use

?perhaps? instead of saying it DID have the better claim. Anyhow, the

speaker seems to convey the idea that his choice was based more on energy, youth

and glamour, for he writes ?it was grassy and wanted to wear.? Bloom casts a

little light by asserting that the notion that a road is less traveled than

another is a fiction, a story the speaker ?shall be telling? us for ?ages

and ages hence? (33). I personally think the idea of a ?fiction? is

ingenious, but little short of my capability to perceive, without outside help.

So we proceed: And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden

black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to

way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence: After ponderous thinking, the speaker makes a

decision and tries to persuade himself that he will eventually satisfy his

desire to ?travel both paths.? However, he simultaneously admits that such

hope is unrealistic. It seems like the speaker is aware of the fact that life is

very short. The underpinning message is that once we get to a turning point in

our life and make that pivotal decision; then, we can hardly ?turn back,?

and this should be repeated to us ?for ages and ages to come,? in order to

make sure that we understand. The speaker than, goes on to gracefully conclude

his poem: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference. The tone clearly shifts in this stanza,

for it begins with a new sentence indicating a stronger break from the previous

ideas. Moreover, the poet makes use of repetition to lambaste the reader with

the main theme again. Second we notice in this stanza the disappearance of the

word ?yellow? before the ?wood.? It seems like, now the speaker has

arrived at the conclusion of his journey and is at peace with himself.

Consequently, he feels not compelled to remind us the wood?s initial

?yellow? appearance, where everything seemed hard and convoluted. It?s

ironic that what he suggests here clearly contradict what he had previously

claimed. Indeed, the notion that the two roads were ?as just and fair? and

that ?the passing there had worn them the same? two clear-cut notions of

parity, the verisimilitude of the two roads is interestingly changed into one

road being ?less traveled by.? I guess, the speaker astutely points out, or

we can say he follows the example of those of us, who looking back in

perspective see our own, subjective vision of reality as opposed to the

objective assessment of reality. To conclude here, I would say poetry has a

powerful ability to penetrate into our innermost self. It has the power to

suggest and imply by reaching out towards a vision and probing down into

emotion. Similarly, I not only chose to write about this poem because I knew

about the great American de facto poet laureate (potter 3), but because I can

relate to Frost?s main theme, that of ?diverging roads.? His vision of

life is very consonant with my real life experience and everything in the poem

flows in confluence with what I think, with a slight nuance. In my case, after

ten years of involuntary exile from school for which I paid an exorbitant price,

I did manage to ?go back? to the other road and recuperate the squandered

time.

Bloom, Harold. Bloom?s Major Poets: Robert Frost. New York: Chelsea House

Publishers, 1999. Potter, James L. Robert Frost Handbook. New Jersey: U of

Pennsylvania P, 1975.