FREE ESSAY ON ROBERT FROST'S THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

ROBERT FROST'S THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

The word decision is defined by Webster's Dictionary as, the act of deciding, or
judgement. People have to make decisions in their lives all the time. One of the largest
decisions is what to do after high school. This decision is certainly going to take you
in one direction of another. And the places where your decisions would take you can
differ greatly. Similarly, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost uses symbolism to
demonstrate that everyone is a traveler who chooses the road to follow on his or her
journey in life. Each reader comes away with a slightly different meaning from the poem;
their human condition will probably dictate the context in which they will interpret the
poem. While the speaker chooses which path he ought to take in the woods in Robert
Frost's The Road Not Taken, he also demonstrates that the decision, whether made
whimsically or thought long and hard about, will change the speakers life in a way that
can't be predicted.
The poem starts with Two roads diverge in a yellow wood,/And sorry I could not travel
both/And be one traveler, long I stood/And looked down one as far as I could... The
speaker is faced with a decision. He can go down the road on the right, or he can go down
the road on the left. But he realizes that he can do only one. The poem is in the past
tence, therefore, the reader knows that the narrator is reflecting on a past experience.
What will the traveler miss out on? There could very well be a strong feeling of regret
before the choice is even made. The road that is chosen leads to the unknown as does
every major decision in life. No matter how hard or long the speaker ponders which road
to take, he won't be able to predict the future. And after his decision is made, he will
never find out what could have been.
The next stanza starts with,Then took the other, as just as fair,/And having perhaps the
better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear... The road that the man took was
obviously not for everyone because it seemed to him that the majority of the people took
the other path. The fact that the traveler chooses the less travled path over the more
travled indicates the personality type of the traveler. The traveler seeks to be unique
and go against the grain of society.
He starts the next stanza with,And both that morning equally lay/In leaves no step had
trodden black. The roads are described as if they had not been walked on that day.
Perhaps, Frost does this because each time a person comes to the point where they have a
decision to make, the situation seems new to them. Also, Frost probably made the narrator
alone to emphasize how alone people are in their decisions. Next in the stanza, Frost
says oh, I kept the first for another day!/Yet knowing how way leads on to way,/I doubted
if I should ever come back. The traveler comes to the realization that he will never get
to experience where the other road lead. He will continue on the road that he chose and
he will never come to the same place where those same two roads diverged.
Frost says in the next stanza,I shall be telling this with a sigh/Somewhere ages and ages
hence:/Two roads diverged in a wood... The sigh in the poem is very important because how
it is interpreted can change the whole meaning of the poem for the reader. If the reader
interprets the sigh as a sigh of regret then the poem will be seen as an expression of
that regret. The poem will have to do with the fact that we, as mortal humans don't have
the ability to explore all of life's possibilities.
However, if the sigh is seen as being more meaningless to the traveler, then the poem
could be seen as a satire. And the travelers decision could be seen as more of a
spur-of-the-moment choice. Then in reality, he deserves no credit for his decision and
Frost would then be playing the role of the average man. He would be poking fun at man's
tendency to make a whimsical choice between two equal factors and then to praise his
choice later as having made all the difference.
The poem definately has a rhythmic pattern that can be broken down as follows.
The Road Not Taken represents a choice in a single moment in a lifetime. Robert Frost
uses plain,unelaborate words and images to convey his theme. However, the poem seems to
be deceivingly simple because in its simplicity, it opens the door for many different
interpretations. Mostly though, The Road Not Taken can truly be interpreted as a clear
representation of two fair choices. Although the two roads in the poem are diverging,
they lead in different directions. At the beginning they probably appear to be similar,
but miles away, they will grow farther and farther away from each other, similar to many
choices we are faced with in life. It is impossible to fortell the consequences of most
of the major decisions we make and it is often necessary to make these decisions based on
little more than examining which choice wanted wear. When we are older, we look back upon
the choices we have made, and like the narrator, sigh, observing that they have made all
the difference.