Robert Frost Essay, Research Paper

ROBERT FROST

In most of Robert Frost s poems he speaks of situations occurring in rural settings, as in The Road Not Taken (DiYanni 513) and The Tuft of Flowers (DiYanni 667-668). These, like most of his poems, are in the style of conversation. Although this helps to make him seem natural, it is not a very effective form in poetry; we do not understand complicated matters naturally. Conversation is the most careless and formless of human utterance; it is spontaneous and unrevised, and its vocabulary is commonly limited. Poetry is the most difficult form of human utterance (DiYanni 665). Although the two forms are complete opposites, Frost has been able to forge them together to create several beautiful poems. His mastery of this complicated endeavor has made him a well-renowned and well-liked poet.

In The Road Not Taken, Frost speaks of his decision between taking one path or another. This poem uses a great deal of symbolism. The words themselves talk of an actual fork in a road and what happens when one is taken. However, Frost is actually speaking of a fork in life, something that everyone faces almost on a daily basis. In the poem, Frost stands at the fork looking down both, trying to decide which one is the better of the two. This is something we do in life when faced with a decision. We weigh the options of each path and make the decision that is best based on our judgments and experiences. He then goes on to say that he takes the road that is grassy and wanted wear (Line 8), but soon finds out that it is just as worn as the other path looked. In life, no matter which path we take, we are not the first. There has always been someone (or several people) who have taken the same path. Both in the poem and in life, we can not help but think what the other path would have been like. We can then either make the decision to go back and try the other path, in some cases, or continue on our present course. In the poem, Frost decides to stay on his current path, as he has already been on it for more than a day. He goes on to say Yet knowing how way leads on to way,/ I doubted if I should ever come back. (Lines 14-15). This holds true in life as well. Even if we want to go back to take the road not taken, we usually can not because our current path has already led us to new decisions which must be made. This is something that everyone has to deal with in our later years. We can only hope that the paths we have chosen through our lives have been the most fulfilling paths. In the closing lines of the poem, Frost says I took the one less traveled by,/ And that has made all the difference. This is an incorrect statement in two ways. One, he did not take the road less traveled by. It only seemed at first to be that way, but once he was further down the road, he noticed that it was just as worn as the other. Another way that this statement is false is how he says that his decision made all the difference – it made him who he is today. Though this may in fact be true, there is no way to know that. He may have turned out the same way had he taken the other path. This is merely an attempt to justify the decisions he has made in his life. We all do this – pretending, if you will, that all of our decisions have been the correct ones.

In The Tuft of Flowers , Frost speaks of standing in the middle of a freshly mowed field. He is looking around for the person who has mowed it, but they are not in sight. As he is standing there, a butterfly catches his eye. It is looking for a flower, but they have all been cut down. It flies around the whole field in search, and finally finds a tuft of flowers left unmowed beside a brook. Frost says that they were left there because the mower loved them, so he (or she) left them to flourish. The two of them, Frost and the mower, were, in a sense, working together to preserve the beauty of the tuft of flowers. The mower s job was to leave the flowers rather than cutting them down. Frost s job was to be the one to see them and enjoy them for what they are. This leads Frost into saying that The butterfly and I had lit upon,/ Nevertheless, a message in the dawn/……And feel a spirit kindred to my own;/ So that henceforth I worked no more alone, (Lines 29-30, 33-34). This message opened his eyes to the beauty of nature around him, and the fact that others (the mower, for example) share this feeling with him. From this message he learns that even if he is standing by himself in a field, he is not alone. This is evident in the final two lines of the poem: Men work together, I told him from the heart,/ Whether they work together or apart.

There are several similarities between these two poems. One of these is Frost s consistent nature theme. Both poems take place in the outdoors. In The Road Not Taken, he is in a wooded area, whereas in The Tuft of Flowers he is in an open field. In both of these he is physically alone. In the first, he is traveling alone, paying attention to the path he is walking down and wondering where it will take him. He is learning about the world around him. In the latter, he is simply standing in the field taking in everything that is around him. The butterfly is doing the exploring for him, and, in turn, opens his eyes to the world around him. Both poems deal with Frost s outlook on life. In the first, he discusses the every day task of choosing our own paths and seeing where they take us, whether we are taking them alone or not. In the second, he learns that he is never alone. He learns that even though all the flowers in the field have just been chopped down, he can still find one beautiful spot left untouched. He learns from this that he is not the only one who loves the beauty of nature. He feels mankind s love of nature, and knows that he will never be alone, no matter which path he decides to travel down.

The tones of these two poems are slightly different. The tone of The Tuft of Flowers is a happy one. He speaks of butterflies and, eventually, flowers. The image that Frost paints in the reader s mind in this poem is a very peaceful scene. He is delighted to discover that others share his feelings about nature. However, the tone in The Road Not Taken is not as clear. It is not necessarily a happy poem, nor is it a sad poem. He simply discusses the decision-making process we face throughout our lives. He does not say if his decisions were good or if they were bad. The final stanza of the poem could be looked at as being sad. In a way it is saddening to know that we will never know how things could have been had we made different decisions. We can only accept what has become of ourselves and continue to make what we feel to be the best decisions.

Works Cited

DiYanni, Robert, ed. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. Boston:

McGraw-Hill, 1998.

Frost, Robert. The Tuft of Flowers. DiYanni 667-668.

- – - -. The Road Not Taken. DiYanni 513.

Winters, Yvor. Robert Frost: Or, the Spiritual Drifter as Poet. DiYanni 665-666.