Insrtuctor’s Name
It is truth universally acknowledged that the theme of the human’s choice has always been popular with the poets and writers. It is not surprising that Robert Frost, an iconic American poet, addresses it in his most famous and most quoted poem, The Road not Taken (“The Norton Anthology of Poetry” 1232-1233). In spite of the widely spread opinion that the poem raises the problem of “being an individual” or “taking a different road from the masses” (Fagan 293), I strongly believe that the poet’s major intention is to emphasize that no matter what choice we make there will always remain a lingering feeling of regret about the missed possibilities. In my essay, I will try to prove my point of view dwelling upon the mood of the poem and its imagery.
The first argument in favor of the thesis is the emotional key of the poem which changes from the meditative and somewhat hesitant mood in the first stanza to self-assurance in the second one, to doubts in the penultimate one and, finally, to the regretful tone of the final stanza. The poem opens with a description of a fork of roads in a “yellow wood” (1) that sets the poet thinking about which way to choose, wishing he could “travel both” (2). The poet’s hesitation is skilfully conveyed through the deliberate repetition of the first part of the sentence, called anaphora (LiteraryDevices.net), which is employed in the first stanza: “And sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler, long I stood / And looked down one as far as I could” (2-4). What else if not lack of confidence does the repeated conjunction “And“ at the beginning of each line express? Standing at the crossroads, torn between the two choices and still unable to arrive at a decision – that is exactly what the poet seems to be experiencing. It should be noted that it is already at this point that the narrator has fancy for one of them that “bent in the undergrowth” (5). To me personally, it looks rather enchanting and promising as the winding path implied by the verb “bent”, the small trees, probably the saplings of the taller ones, and the bushes, which form the so called “undergrowth”, bear a certain resemblance to a fairy-tale wood through which one can get to a magic land. It certainly is NOT easy to pass through. It is not surprising that the poet should have spent much time looking right into its thick: “long I stood / And looked down one as far as I could” (3-4).
In the second stanza, though, we learn that the poet who has “the better claim” (7), i.e. wishes for a better fate for himself, and decides on the other road that looks more untouched and more pleasant to walk as “it was grassy and wanted wear” (8). Thus, the poet makes this spontaneous decision seized by a desire to be the first to walk on that grass. The spontaneity of the decision is well perceived at the beginning of the stanza because the previous meditative tone is interrupted abruptly by the phrase “Then took the other ” (6), which is quite an illogical thing to do, particularly after thinking so much about the first road. Due to the adjectives “fair”, “better”, “grassy” (6-8), we understand that the poet is feeling rather self-assured at the beginning of the stanza. However, towards its end, the poet’s excitement is gone and he realizes that going through a grassy patch of land is not so challenging. No one will ever know the difference as the grass is quick to rise: “Though as for that the passing there / Had worn them really about the same” (9-10). Thus, how can one be sure that the grassy path is truly untouched?
The seeds of doubt planted in the poet’s heart at the end of the second stanza take form in the penultimate one as the poet realizes that Autumn is the master of disguise. It covers all the steps with leaves hiding any trace of human presence. Now both the roads, the taken one and the one neglected, look equally “virgin”: “And both [the roads] that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black” (11-12). Thus, if the poet chose the grassy road only to leave a trace on it, then it means he refused to follow the path of his dream for some delusive hope to be a pioneer, but it was all in vain. The interjection “Oh” in line 13 introduces an exclamatory sentence, which is the only sparkle of emotion in this poem, its climax: “Oh, I kept the first for another day!” (13). It sounds like a heart-cry of despair or, probably, of consolation that one day there will be a chance to travel the road of his dream. However, reading the next lines we understand that it is cold comfort to cherish a delusive hope like this: “I doubted if I shall ever come back” (15). It does not mean that the poet is cowardly or weak-willed, but those winding paths in the forest are so easy to lose, they may turn into wide roads or disappear in the thick, or intertwine with each other.
This desperate line prepares us for the mood of the last stanza, which is regretful, almost sad, the emotionally colored word “sigh” (16) emphasizing the implied feeling of disappointment. The first sentence of the poem is echoed in the last stanza creating an effect of flashback, i.e. “an interruption of the chronological sequence with an event of earlier occurrence.” (LiteraryDevices.net). It might seem as if an old man were telling the story of his life to his grandchildren and recalling his past. The aposiopesis, which is a stylistic device of breaking the utterance abruptly (LiteraryDevices.net), is used in line 18 and reflects the emotional state of the narrator and creates suspense as we may not know what will be in the end: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - / I took the one less traveled by” (18-19). Together with the aposiopesis, the repetition of the pronoun “I” expresses the poet’s disappointment with himself and his own decision. Nothing can be changed now as “ages and ages” (17) have passed. In this light, the final phrase “And that has made all the difference” (20) does not sound triumphant as might be understood if we read only the last two lines of the poem. Thus, we understand that the chosen road no longer looks as inviting as it used to. However, had he taken the first way, it might have equally disappointed the poet. Such is the human nature.
Another argument to support the statement given in the introduction is the imagery of his poem. Robert Frost is considered to be “a nature poet” who “wrote poems distinctly in the pastoral and georgic mode” (Faggen 49), or “writes of apple trees and stone walls and leaf-covered roads” (Bolton 24). However, there is always an undercurrent of implied significance due to his skilful usage of metaphors. The Road Not Taken is obviously a poem set in a forest, in a very pastoral landscape: the fork of two roads winding through a yellow wood, the rustle of the golden leaves under the poet’s feet, the velvety softness of the untouched grass and the fairy-like wood . Does this scenery not look romantic or even idealized? Is this not the way the country life is depicted in the pastoral? Thus, it seems to be a pastoral poem, but it would be too simple for Robert Frost, whose “ostensibly simple poetic language” concealed the complexity of ideas (Marson 56). What is implied in R. Frost’s poetry usually outweighs what is expressed. Robert Frost is the greatest advocate of the metaphor. According to the poet, the most important thing about poetry is “the pleasure of ulteriority”. “Poetry is simply made of metaphor Every poem is a new metaphor inside or it is nothing.” (“Collected Prose of Robert Frost” 147). Considering Frost’s literary creed, we can understand now that the poem is about not only trees and grass, and bushes, and autumn leaves. In the focus of Frost’s attention is the philosophical theme of choice, and the crossroads may be understood as a metaphor standing for vital decisions, whereas the “yellow wood” is a metaphor implying our life itself. Which road should we choose in life? What career path? Which political or religious beliefs should we accept? What kind of person should we choose as our life companion? Are we to listen to our hearts and choose the one we have fancy for or are we to be reasonable and opt for the one that “has better claims”? As we see, the list of options in life is endless, and all of them are associated with the roads we take. Thus, the metaphor employed by the poet has a personal ring for everyone, particularly for Robert Frost himself, who, as we know, is America’s greatest skeptic as he “ mistrusts categorical answers, utopian solutions, and cannot or will not make up his mind” (Gray 382).
This aforementioned metaphor is connected with another one – a “traveler”, i.e. a person standing at the crossroads of life, looking with curiosity in one direction, choosing spontaneously the other one as it might be more advantageous from different points of view and still looking back at the left one. We live this life, travelling from one milestone to another, changing directions or waiting. There is only one thing we can never do - return back. That is why we look at the “roads not taken” with a sigh or regret, hoping that one day we will return and start our life anew. However, in this world, we cannot run after two hares or have the cake and eat it. What we do in life is done irrevocably and we have only to sigh over the missed opportunities. What makes the situation even more ironical is that no matter which way we choose, we will always think that we should have known better and regret about the one not chosen. The whole poem is in a way an extended metaphor, i.e. a metaphor revealed through a series of sentences (LiteraryDevices.net), standing for life in which we have to make our choices, and its wisdom is illustrated to us every day. Moreover, not only our life may be compared to the crossroads. In Frost’s case, we can suppose that the poem might be partially about his literary work. Frost was a philosopher, and the basis of his art was dualism. His aim was to write poems that “say spirit in terms of matter and matter in terms of spirit” (Stanlis 6). To some degree, we can imagine the poet himself standing at the crossroads of literature and trying very hard to choose between “matter and spirit as the two basic elements in his dualistic conception of reality” (Stanlis 19).
In conclusion, the poem would never leave anyone indifferent as it definitely touches the heartstrings with the intensity of feeling achieved through the variation of the mood and the masterly employment of the metaphor whose effect is enhanced thanks to the poet’s extraordinary ability to penetrate the human mind and soul. As for the poet’s choice, is the grassy road associated with Frost’s creative work, his seeming simplicity of style? Or, rather, are the thorns of the undergrowth in the second road to be treated like the hazards of another genre in literature? Can they be matter or spirit? They might also have to do with Frost’s “personal misfortune” (Gray 379). It is hard to say what associations the autumn roads gave rise to in Robert Frost’s imagination. One thing is important - he must have been quite disappointed with himself and the road he had taken.
Works Cited
Bolton, Matthew J. “Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, and Modernist Poetics.” Robert Frost (Critical Insights). Ed. Morris Dickstein. New York: Salem Press, 2009. 23-39. Print.
Collected Prose of Robert Frost. Ed. Mark Richardson. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008. Print.
Fagan, Deirdre. Critical companion to Robert Frost: a literary reference to his life and work. New York: Facts On File, 2007. Print.
Faggen, Robert. The Cambridge Introduction to Robert Frost. Cambridge: CUP, 2008. Print.
Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. M. W .Ferguson, and Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy. 5th ed. New York: W, 2016. 1232-1233. Print.
Frost, Robert. “Education by Poetry.” Theimaginativeconservative.org. Web. 9 Apr.2016. http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2013/05/education-by-poetry-robert-frost.html
Gray, Richard. A History of American Literature. 2nd ed. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Print.
LiteraryDevices Editors. “Anaphora” LiteraryDevices.net. 2013. Web. 9 Apr.2016. http://literarydevices.net/?s=anaphora
LiteraryDevices Editors. “Aposiopesis” LiteraryDevices.net. 2013. Web. 9 Apr.2016. http://literarydevices.net/?s=Aposiopesis
LiteraryDevices Editors. “Extended Metaphor” LiteraryDevices.net. 2013. Web. 9 Apr.2016. http://literarydevices.net/?s=extended+metaphor
LiteraryDevices Editors. “Flashback” LiteraryDevices.net. 2013. Web. 9 Apr.2016. http://literarydevices.net/?s=flashback
LiteraryDevices Editors. “Metaphor” LiteraryDevices.net. 2013. Web. 9 Apr.2016. http://literarydevices.net/?s=metaphor
Marson, Janice. “Robert Frost: A Look at the Critical Reception.” Robert Frost (Critical Insights). Ed. Morris Dickstein. New York: Salem Press, 2009. 40-60. Print.
Stanlis, Peter J. Robert Frost: The Poet as Philosopher. ISI Books, 2007. Print.
