English Oral
Sam Freeman
Miss Canniffe, and fellow students. Carpe Deim “Seize the Day” is, putting it plainly, positively living for the day and is most significantly different to the term adopted by our current youth culture YOLO which is often attributed to reckless behaviour. Poets are mostly drawn to this theme of Carpe Diem because it is uplifting and a positive way of living your life. Robert Frost wrote The Road Not Taken during WW1 after recently losing four family members. Not surprisingly at the time he was faced with multiple life choices which would impact his current state of mind and possible future happiness. This was directly translated in the poem through his persona who comes to a cross roads in his walking path. He decides on the path less trodden, recognising it as possibly a life-changing decision but one that needed to be made at that point in time, hence seizing the moment.

This poem is a confessional poem of Frost himself, as he constructs a representation of Carpe Diem in The Road Not Taken. This is substantiated not only by his feelings, but also by the context in which he wrote, its form of four stanzas of five lines consisting of a rhyme scheme of ABAAB, which exudes a tone of puzzlement yet accomplishment. However, it is in the poem’s sense of happiness that Carpe Diem is most significantly represented as a major theme. The philosophy of seizing the moment is represented by Frost on several levels in the road not taken, but most prominently through its poetic devise of tone and repetition.

Firstly in the poem Frost uses poetic devises such as repetition to convey the theme of Carpe Deim. Throughout the poem Frost uses successive sentences beginning with the word "and", as demonstrated in the first stanza, saying, "AND sorry I could not travel both / AND be one traveller. / And looked down one as far." This is indicative of Frost's persona's extended deliberation over his decision. This use of repetition brings a positive, upbeat reading to the poem

Frost used an extended metaphor in the poem to emphasis Carpe Deim, throughout the poem the metaphor of life choices