Frost, The Road Not Taken Essay, Research Paper

The poem “The Road Not Taken” is popular for a good reason. It has many different meanings, all of which are fair interpretations. My interpretation is that throughout life, we are faced with many difficult decisions. We should strive to be unique when making these decisions. The reason I chose this poem is because this idea relates to me quite well. I try to live in the manner Frost describes. Taking the common path is not the best way to live and I think that Robert Frost is trying to tell us this in “The Road Not Taken.”

Frost’s writing has many interesting characteristics. These characteristics give his writing a unique style. One of the characteristics is ambiguity. Writing with ambiguity means that he writes in such a way that he leaves the poetry open to various interpretations. This is certainly true here. Besides my interpretations there are many others. One could interpret the poem to saying that it doesn’t really matter which road you take in life, you will get there eventually. Or it could be interpreted as saying that life is an open book and one can choose to be anything you want. The decisions that we make will shape our future decisions. There are many more different possible interpretations, all of which are perfectly valid.

Frost’s writing often revolves around or takes place in nature. In this poem, nature is the setting for the action. Frost is generally very good at describing nature. In this poem, he uses descriptive words and phrases such as yellow, grassy, trodden, wanting wear, and trodden black. I think that the reason that Frost puts the poem in nature is to show man’s relationship to nature. In this case, the man is forced to make a decision about which road he will take just like he needs to make decisions about the roads he will take in his life.

In order to communicate ideas Frost uses various poetic devices. One of these devices is the meter or rhythm of the poem. In this case, Frost uses a meter that makes one feel like I was actually walking. He does this by choosing his words and phrases in such a way that every other syllable has an accent. For example, he writes,

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth

The use of a set meter really adds to the overall effect of the poem and Robert Frost uses it very appropriately.

Another poetic device Frost uses also deals with the structure of the poem. The stanza breaks help to show the completion of thoughts. In this poem, Frost uses stanza break to separate descriptions of each road, his plan for coming back again, and his lament for not being able to take both paths. The effective use of stanza break helps keep the reader from getting confused.

Frost also uses colloquial language in this poem. Writing in colloquial language is writing how the people of the author’s time would speak. Two examples are: “Somewhere ages and ages hence” and “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.” Speaking in this way makes it easier for people of the author’s time period to identify with the author. It would be much more difficult, for example, for the same readers to understand a poem that was written in the British style.

The final characteristic of Robert Frost’s writing style is the way in which he ends his poems. Most of them he finishes with a moral. The moral is not told straight out though. He usually ends the poem in a sort of suggestion. In this poem he says:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

By saying this he is showing us that some decisions are very important and are not to be taken lightly. The way that he phrases the last two lines shows that he is not telling us this, but merely suggesting it.

Robert Frost is definitely one of the 20th century’s finest poets. His use of ambiguity, relationship to nature, poetic devices, and suggestive endings give his poetry a uniqueness that separates him from all other poets. Perhaps the thing that is most interesting about Frost’s writing is his ability to identify with the reader. While difficult to explain, he does it very well and it makes reading his poetry much more fun.

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