Student Question
Why does Robert Frost use nature in "The Road Not Taken"?
Quick answer:
Robert Frost uses nature in "The Road Not Taken" as a metaphor for life's choices and dilemmas. The poem's setting—a fork in the woods—symbolizes the critical decisions we face. Frost contrasts the literal paths with the figurative choices, emphasizing the impact of decisions on one's life. Nature serves not as a romantic background but as an analogy for the challenges and consequences of human decision-making.
Frost's treatment of nature in his poems greatly differs from the one presented in Romanticism. Poets like Wordsworth glorified nature and thought it consisted of elements which were divine. Frost, in contrast, utilizes nature as a symbol of man's relation to the world he dwells in. Nature is used as a background of his poems and as an analogy to a complex human issue. Through nature and its elements, Frost desires to illustrate a more complex situation or problem that we contend with in our life.
To illustrate this, we can refer to one of his most famous poems - "The Road Not Taken." The poem is set in the woods in autumn, and the speaker comes to a fork in the road and has to decide which path he should choose. He analyzes the appearance of the two roads in front of him and wants to pick the one...
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which is grassier, because it means it is less traveled. Although the poem seems to be about two paths in the yellow woods and the way they look, if we go beyond the literal meaning, we can see that Frost talks about life and dilemmas we are all faced with. The two paths symbolize the paths we take in life and how each path can offer something which will change our life for good. Once the speaker chooses a path, he cannot go back to the other path:
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,I doubted if I should ever come back.
What this symbolically means is that once we make a choice, we cannot go back a point when we were able to choose between certain options. Instead, we have to deal with the outcome of the choice we made. So, Frost focuses on the inevitability of making an important choice in life. Although the poem may be interpreted as a tale about two roads which diverge in the yellow woods, we can view this natural scene symbolically and realize that the focus is not on the beauty and importance of nature, but on human life and its concerns.
"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost uses an extended metaphor. The entire road concept represents a literal road and the figurative one signifies choices that one faces in life.
When the person comes to a "y" or fork in the road, the road is in the woods. It must be fall since the leaves are yellow.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both...
Inferentially, the figurative meaning of the woods is that the surrounding area would symbolize the life of the man who has to make the decision.
The man stands in the woods facing the roads and thinks. "Which way do I go?" Figuratively, he means that life has presented me with two different paths to follow.
Which one do I choose? One looks less traveled but so does the other one. One has green grass but so does the other one. Well, he makes a decision and sticks with it. The narrator decides on the one on the right and apparently, good or bad (hopefully for the good) that has made a big difference in his life. Those options he list about the road would things that he would have to consider in making the right life decision.
The narrator does hope that he will be able to come back to this same wooded area and this same fork in the road again and tavel the other path. However, he really doubts that will happen.
In life, a person often gets only one chance to accomplish something. A career, a marriage, a business, a decision--any of these choices could have been faced by the narrator. There all sorts of things to consider, yet it takes courage to take a stand or make a difficult decision. Sometimes a person gets lost in those figurative woods and has choose which way to go...that is what Frost was talking about in life.
A great poem by a literary giant...probably one of the most frequently quoted in all of literature.
Two road diverged in a yellow wood, And I--
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.