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A Poem Analysis by:
Belle S. Sermeno III-Mendeleev
Belle
S. Sermeno
October 20, 2011
III-Mendeleev
The Road Not Taken Background Robert
of the Author
Lee Frost
Robert
Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, though he never earned a formal degree. Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly," was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent. In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire Robert Frost (1914) farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was influenced Source: http://www.art.com/ by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. While in England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his work. By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length collections, A Boy's W ill and North of Boston, and his reputation was established. By the nineteen-twenties, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new book² including New Hampshire (1923), A Further Range(1936), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing (1962)²his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes) increased. Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony. Robert
Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in Boston on January 29, 1963. Source: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/192
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Summary On the poem, the speaker stand of the woods where he arrives at a point where he must decide which of two equally appealing choices is the better one. He stands at the fork for a long time and examines one of the roads as far as he can. He can't see the end of the road because the road curves away from his line of vision.
The speaker selects the road that appears at first glance to be less worn and therefore less traveled. The road he selected may be more deserving for the speaker to be walked on because it has grass. The poem suggests that he has an independent spirit and does not wish to follow the crowd. Leaves cover both roads equally. No one on this morning has yet taken either road, for the leaves lie undisturbed. The speaker remains committed to his decision to take the road he had previously selected, saying that he will save the other road for another day. But he suspects that he'll never follow through on that decision. Once he takes the second road, that road will lead to another fork and he¶ll have to neglect another possible path choice. Hence, because of all the future road choices he knows he'll encounter, he thinks he's unlikely to ever come back and discover what this first road is like. When he's much older, he will reminisce about this decision he is making. While doing so, he will sigh either with relief that he made the right choice or with regret that he made the wrong choice. Whether right or wrong, the choice will have had a significant impact on his life. The speaker of the poem does not even know the nature of that sigh, because that sigh and his evaluation of the difference his choice will make are still in the future. It is a self-evident truth that any choice an individual makes is going to make the difference in how one's future will turns out.
Speaker (Analysis) Our
speaker in the poem is a very conflicted guy. He doesn't tell us too much information about himself, but we know that he is facing a big decision; the point where he must decide the road he's walking on, and the life he's leading. His life is splitting into two separate roads up ahead. Using the metaphorical significance of this poem taking place in autumn could be that the speaker is making this choice in the fall of his life, when he's beginning to grow old. If the woods are a metaphor for the speaker's life, we can guess that he's somewhere in the fall of his life, maybe his forties or fifties. In this stage of his life, it is probably too late to go back and change his mind after he makes big decisions; he knows that he probably will never have time. The decision he's up against could be something like changing careers or moving to a different place. He could just be having the typical mid-life crisis, unsure if he likes where his life is going, even though he always thought he would. Whatever the decision is, it must be major, because he knows that he'll still be talking about it far in the future, saying that it made a big difference in his life. Page | 2
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Form, Meter and Structure (Analysis) The poem consists of four stanzas with five lines each which are called quintains or quintet. And in each quintain, the rhyme scheme is ABAAB. For example, in the first stanza: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, (A) And sorry I could not travel both (B) And be one traveler, long I stood (A) And looked down one as far as I could (A) To where it bent in the undergrowth; (B) This poem is in iambic tetrameter, which means that there are only four feet or unit of stressed and unstressed syllables. If one person will read the poem aloud, we should be able to hear four distinct beats per line. For example, in the first line in stanza: Two roads | diverged | in a yell |ow wood
Figures of Speech (Analysis) *
Personification ³Because
it was grassy and wanted wear;´
Line 3 of 2
nd
stanza of The Road Not T aken
All sensible people know that roads don't think. But the description of the road wanting wear is an example of personification in this poem. A road actually wanting some as a person would. Therefore, personification occurs here if wanted means desired. However, no personification occurs, if wanted means lacked. *
Metaphor
The poem uses the well known metaphor of a path being compared to life, and a divergent path representing a choice.
Symbolism and Imagery (Analysis) *
Symbolism Roads
This poem is about actual and figurative roads: the roads we walk and drive on, and the roads we take through life. As the speaker of this poem discusses, for every road we take, there's a road we don't take. Wrong turn or not, the roads we take can end up making significant changes in our lives. And we'll always wonder about the roads that we didn't try. Nature This poem centers on two roads or paths going through the woods in autumn. Nature in this poem sets the scene, and could hold metaphorical meaning as well. The speaker tells us the woods are yellow, so we can infer that it's autumn. The metaphorical significance of this poem taking place in autumn could be that the speaker is making this choice in the fall of his life, when he's beginning to grow old. Page | 3
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*
Imagery ³ And
both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black.´ Line 11-12 of The Road Not T aken
Here, we see the autumn imagery, and we find out that it's morning.
Theme (Analysis) The theme of the story is all individualism, caution, commitment and accepting the challenge. It shows being independent or individualism because the speaker chooses to go his own way, taking the road less traveled by most other travelers. The poem also considers the theme of caution because before deciding to take the road less traveled, the speaker takes time to think whether to take the road less traveled or the other road. The speaker does not have second thoughts after making his decision which shows the theme of commitment. And another thing, it may be that the road the speaker chooses is less traveled because it presents trials and different challenges.
Short Reflection The poem, ³The Road Not Taken´, is one of the few poems I know. All of the poems I read, I always accept the literal meaning of it. I finish reading this poem knowing that it is just all about a person choosing a better road. As I slightly analyze the poem, I find out that this is not just all about paths and roads, it more about it, it is about life. As explained in the poem, both pathways looked equally beneficial and seemed to be hard to identify as the better one. Pathways mean decisions. Therefore, we have different problems in our lives but in choosing the right decisions, all of the choices look equally beneficial and convincing. The phrases ³better claim´ and ³wanted wear´ were used in the poem. These phrases create an image of something more appealing. In making decisions, we always stick ourselves to the one which convince us more. Always remember that different people have different temptations and wants. When it talks about ³Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back.´ it always reminding me of word ³regret´. Another thing, this stanza: ³I
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. ´ Last stanza of The Road Not T aken
For me, I can relate for the first and second line with the people telling me about their struggles with taking that chance and because of it, they have changed. That thing means they didn¶t play follower but decided to be a leader and take the most unused road and possibility. And because of their experience, they have changed emotional. I believe this poem is trying to teach us to choose what we want to do and not what others do.
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