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What modernist features are present in Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken"?
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The modernist features in Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” are individualism and symbolism. Modernist poetry is a style that aims to break away from traditional forms. Although Frost includes some classical elements in his poem, he does modify traditional beliefs by using symbolism to create ambiguity and by placing more significance on the individual than society.
Although Robert Frost is often characterized as an American modernist poet, that label is somewhat of a misnomer. His poetry frequently contains traditional elements such as meter and rhyme rather than modernist free verse. “The Road Not Taken” falls into this category with its rhyme scheme:
Two roads diverged 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
Nevertheless, “The Road Not Taken” contains modernist features as well. The combination of modern and traditional forms is a style that modifies and strays from the usual poetic forms of the early twentieth century. Such experimentation fits the modernist mold.
Modernist poets are engaged with their society and its issues. However, they infuse a sense of individualism into their writing. They believe the individual is a more interesting subject than society,...
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so, using simple sentences, they emphasize the dilemmas and moral worth of the individual in their poems. For example, in “The Road Not Taken,” Frost focuses on the narrator’s nostalgic regrets over the possibilities that existed in his past:
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Frost also employs symbolism, which is characteristic of the Modernist period. A symbol is generally defined as something that means more than what it purports to be. In “The Road Not Taken,” the most significant example is the narrator’s choice of roads as a representation of choices everyone makes in life between equally attractive alternatives. By using this symbol, the poet intentionally creates an ambiguity, which is another element of Modernist writing:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The reader is left pondering what the difference would have been had the speaker opted for the other road. Frost infuses a kind of riddle into the poem through his symbolism. Symbolism was not a new concept in literature, but the manner in which the poet used the symbol to establish the riddle was innovative.
In this poem, Frost’s emphasis is clearly on the mindset of the individual facing life’s dilemmas and regrets. There is no direct criticism of societal ills that might have caused those regrets. The symbolism he uses to construct the poem’s ambiguity coupled with the concept of individualism justifies classifying “The Road Not Taken” as belonging to the Modernist period.