Greta Montaperto
Dr. Kenn DeShane
English 102-B31 LUO
June 30, 2015
Analysis of Robert Frost’s Poem “The Road Not Taken”
Frost’s classical poem “The Road Not Taken” is a work deeply dependent on the use of symbolism and allegory to express the implicit meaning. The poem is an account of a moment in a person’s life where he/she needs to make a choice, standing at a fork in the road “in a yellow wood.” (Line 1)
Robert Frost explained most of the choices we make in life into a twenty-line poem of a person picking which path to take in a "yellow wood"(line 1). “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” From the first sentence one can appreciate that the person who penned this poem is a very deep thinker. It is evident with symbolism and metaphorical thinking. The symbolism in this paragraph describes the choice between two of life’s many choices. It’s completely associated to fate in that there are only two roads that can be chosen. The diverging is symbolic of the distancing between the two decisions. Both are far apart, yet they start from the same point. The author says that he looks down both paths, attempting to see where they may lead, but he can only see so far. At some point, the bushes of both paths blanket the remainder of the path all the way to its ending.
The author uses odd ways to rhyme the words. It doesn’t have a lot of rhythm to it and it’s hard to read the first time and understand completely. He also uses a very interesting sentence structure; it’s divided into two distinct parts. The first part makes a vague statement, the other is more specific. Every day people make decisions to do particular tasks, choose a particular walk, or to just sit at home and do completely nothing. One person can never know for sure what the accurate result could be if one were to choose the other option. Though most people rarely look into the sacrifice of decision making the way Robert Frost does, it is indeed a highly examined way too understand a path “less traveled by" (line 19) . The first stanza announced to the reader the decision the author would have to make. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood” (line 1) signified that the result of his decision would arise from the same origin. And though he would have liked to have seen the outcome of both paths, he knew he could only choose one. In trying to make his decision, he looked down both paths only to find that he couldn’t see past the bend. We often find this in real life decisions. We can only see so far down the path of our decision before it is blocked by a