The Road Not Taken Group

Question:

owen7
owen7
Student
College - Junior

Help me analyze this poem.

Rate question:

Posted by owen7 on Saturday October 3, 2009 at 11:14 AM and tagged with literature, the road not taken.

Answers:


  1. akannan Teacher
    Middle School

    eNotes Editor

    Frost's poem helps to allow the reader to see a divergent road in a completely different manner.  Frost uses the technique of defamilarization to create an innovative manner to view a fork in the road.  A common path in the forest or deep woods is seen as symbolic of human choice and action.  This technique helps to configure the internal sensation and dilemma of freedom from a purely subjective experience to one that can be revealed through objective reality.  Something that remains inside the psyche of an individual, the agonizing decision of how to choose between equally compelling, but ultimately incompatible courses of action, is now manifested through the natural setting of two roads diverging in a forest.  The effect it achieves is to physically force both the speaker and the reader to understand that the agony inherent within choosing between incommensurate courses of action can only be resolved when one commits to a decision and understands it as one that "has made all the difference."

    Rate answer:

    Posted by akannan on Saturday October 3, 2009 at 12:23 PM


  2. kimfuji Teacher
    College - Freshman

    eNotes Editor

    Frost uses defamiliarization when he compares a path in the woods to a human beings life.He makes the reader look at a path in the woods that is covered with grass and is unused in a new way. Now when we enter the woods and see a fork in the path, we think of Frost's poem; and then we realise that the decions we make in our lives have a serious consequesnce. or example, if we choose one major in college over another there is a direct consequence of that action. In another way, if we choose to major in a liberal arts field or an unpopular field of study there will be consequesnce. Those consequences are not only financial but express themselves in how we live our lives.

    Rate answer:

    Posted by kimfuji on Saturday October 3, 2009 at 2:00 PM