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Provide a critical appreciation of Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken".
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"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost is an extended metaphor for life's choices. The poem reflects the speaker's decision at a fork in the road, symbolizing a crucial life choice. While the roads appear similar, the speaker chooses the less traveled one, pondering its impact on his life. The poem explores themes of freedom, regret, and individuality, with nature imagery and a wistful tone, emphasizing the uncertainty and significance of choices.
The poem is one extended metaphor (which shows Frost's poetic gift). It is obviously autobiographical--and Frost acknowledged that it was autobiographical. The poet is remembering how he had to make a choice of careers and life styles, which he compares metaphorically with coming to two diverging roads in the woods. He chose the one which was obviously less traveled by, judging from the fact that it was overgrown with grass and the fallen leaves had not been trodden down and blackened by many passing feet. From our knowledge of Frost's life and from his rustic poetry, we can assume that he chose a simple life that would enable him to devote his thoughts and his time to communing with nature and to creative writing, although he would have to give up the luxuries and excitement and financial rewards he might have had if he had taken the other road. He...
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cannot help wondering what his life might have been like if he had chosen the other road at that crucial juncture in his life's journey. It is significant that even in his extended metaphor representing his life, Frost usesimagery drawn from nature. He greatly resembles the English poet William Wordsworth in getting his inspiration from nature. He also shows a strong spiritual kinship with Henry David Thoreau, the New England naturalist, poet, and philosopher.
I'd simply like to remind you that while most people will dwell on the road he took, the title of the poem is about the path he did not take. While he may have been content with the road he chose (as we eventually all must learn to be), he looks wistfully back at the choice he made and the opportunities he necessarily lost.
While you probably now have enough for a great paper, perhaps you may consider analyzing Frost's poem as a light satire on indecisiveness. As post #3's reference notes, Frost wrote this poem about his fellow poet and friend Edward Thomas who waivered upon the choice of path for them to stroll upon as one might have had more flora than the other.
Choosing the lighthearted satire as a focus will probably be "the road not taken" by the majority of the other students in your class. How's this for a title for your analysis: A Road Infrequently Taken about Frost's "A Road not Taken"?
It’s telling us is to live with the choices we make in our life. If you look at the words of the poem, "Then took the other, as just as fair,/And having perhaps the better claim/Because it was grassy and wanted wear,/Though as for that the passing there/Had worn them really about the same," both roads are similar. It’s not a hard choice because one offers more challenge (less traveled). The challenge is making the choice, following through, and dealing with whatever that choice brings.
This should not be a difficult essay to write if you approach it from the perspective that the two roads in the poem are metaphors for the choices we face in life, choices that might be as simple as what movie to see, to the more complex decisions one faces moving into adulthood, such as choices regarding education, careers, marriage, etc. The difficult part about choices is the knowledge that you're passing up something that might prove to be the better choice--but of course, you'll probably never know for sure--this is what Frost refers to as "the road not taken." It's hard not to second guess oneself, particularly if the choices we make don't turn out the way we had hoped.
"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost stands as a masterpiece illustrating both the literal and figurative meaning of a poem. The narrator of the poem faces a decision that on the surface seems not so difficult. It is the underlying significance that brings the real meaning of the poem to life.
Literal meaning
The narrator in the poem is walking in the woods on an early autumn morning. He comes to a fork in the road and has to decide which way to go. He wishes that he could travel on both roads. When looks down one of the paths, he realizes that he can only see so far before the thick underbrush impedes his view.
In the second stanza, the poet does a cursory look at the roads and quickly chooses one that he first thinks has had less travel than the other one. After looking at the roads a little more, he sees that there really is not much difference in them because both have been traveled on but not recently.
The third stanza explains that the poet regrets that he cannot go down both roads. He first states that he will come back another day and go down the other one; however, in reality, it is doubtful that this will happen.
The fourth stanza speaks of the future. Sometime in the future, the narrator will be telling this story about the fork in the road with a quiet lament. The narrator came to a split in the road. He took what he thought was the better road, and this made a big difference in his life.
Figurative meaning
The poet has to make a decision in his life. The woods are symbolic of the man’s life. Here the man stands having to decide which path to take in his life. The reader does not know what the decision concerns: marriage, career, education, or whatever he faces in his life.
The speaker hope that he has made the right selection. It bothers him that he does not know the outcome of his resolution; however, maybe he can try the other choice in the future.
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 poet realizes that this is not possible. Later in his life, he will explain how he made this important decision with a touch of melancholy. Yet, his decision rendered him able to live his life and that made an enormous distinction. Unfortunately, the reader does not know if this has been a good or bad decision. All that is known is that it made a difference.
The entire poem is an extended metaphor for life and its choices. The road represents both the road that a person walks on and the path that a person takes in life. The repetitions of the first line of the poem in the last stanza is an anaphora used to emphasize the point of the poem.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I---
Thematically, this brings the poem full circle with the idea that the judgment that was made changed his life forever. Wrong turn or not, the roads that are taken can end up making significant changes in our lives. And the scary part is that the person will always wonder “What if….”
The last important aspect of the poem to examine is the title. This gives the true feelings of the poet. It is not titled --the road less traveled or the road I choose. It is "The Road Not Taken." This highlights that "sigh" that the speaker expresses in the last stanza. This poem portrays a choice that speaks more of regret than optimism. Possibly, that difference in the narrator's life was not as good as the reader originally thought.
I think that any critical appreciation of Frost's poetry has to reside with the reader themselves. Frost's unique ability to take common objects and connect an aspect of human experience to them is what makes his writing so profound and introspective on many levels. With this, critical appreciation becomes something that is geared on the part of the individual. At the same time, I think one could take many aspects of his poetry and apply a critical distillation to it. For example, in "The Road Not Taken," there is an extreme praise of human freedom and action. The speaker in the poem decides to take a path that others have not taken and must come to the fact that this choice has "made all the difference." It is a poem that explores freedom in a unique light because it does not necessarily praise it, but analyzes it as a reality that individuals exercise, helping to differentiate them and provide distinction to their identities. The opening line of the last stanza of telling this narrative "with a sigh" helps to highlight this. The exploration of freedom in many different ways is one element that makes Frost's poem so intricate and rich with thought.
At the beginning of the poem, the speaker finds himself at a point of decision - which road should he take? Deeper than the obvious choice of which way to travel, this reflects an individual in the autumn of life trying to determine a direction for the remainder of that life; to follow the commonly traveled path or "the one less traveled by."
The speaker recognizes that either path has merit. There is some desire to be able to travel both paths, but the speaker realizes only one path can be traveled at a time and that s/he probably would not be able to revisit this place in the road (or in life) and choose to take the path not chosen in the poem.
Eventually, the decision is made to follow the path that has not been used as frequently. The speaker understands that this decision will make "all the difference" in the remainder of his/her travels, and his/her life. There is some regret ("telling with a sigh") at not being able to experience the other alternative, but I interpret the poem as reflecting acceptance of the decision that was made.