Presentation and Analysis of the POEM ‘The Road not Taken’ by Robert Frost
[The author’s name]
This essay is to present you with the analysis and aspects of interpretation of the poem ‘The Road not Taken’ written by Robert Frost in the 1920s. ‘The Road not Taken’ is the story of a man and his choice of a road. The thematic core of this poem’s story is the symbolism of a journey. It is a poem written in four stanzas. Each stanza is in the rhyme scheme ABAAB.
Robert Frost, the poet who wrote this poem is one of the most popular poets within the borders of the literary community. The themes met in Frost’s poetry are ‘Youth and Loss of Innocence’[1], in which the procedure of aging in combination with the realization about mistakes made during the careless years of youth are examined, ‘Nature’ which is presented as one of people’s greater teacher. Nature has a lot to teach people and it always keeps its powerful mystery no matter how much people have conquered it. It seems that nature is approached by Frost in a way to offer people with his benefit from approaching it. Nature can live one to his / her self-knowledge since every mystery when studied gives one the admiration and questions on its existence and function. Travelers in the meaning of isolated people who dare to wander around looking for their own knowledge, for acquiring new experiences and becoming better people, is a very popular motif of Frost’s poetry as well. The poet seems to have developed great admiration to those who dare to look for the ways to make their dreams come true through trying to pave their own path in life.
Frost’s time period is ‘a period which has left behind a great part of the principles of Romanticism as a literary movement and has opened new windows to realism as a means of depicting people’s problems, agonies, internal struggles’[2]. There is allegory in Frost’s poetry and the romantic elements and descriptions of his poems are all under the service of their unique symbolic reality.
When seen under this perspectives, ‘The Road not Taken’ can be seen for what it really meant to say according to the poet’s will. It is highlighted that ‘no one can really know what a poet has in mind when writing a poet, but the case of Frost is different’ [3]. Frost became famous and so greatly loved while living, so there is no possibility he himself would have left any reviews of his work wrongly stated. The only weird fact concerning Frost is that he became so greatly loved without really being understood by his readers for what he really wanted to say. It seems that people felt attracted to Frost’s poems without really perceiving the message the poet had in mind.
Something like that probably is valid for the poem ‘The Road not Taken’. Most readers of this poem stay stuck to the image of a road taken by the narrator who probably when reaching his last years in life, felt remorse and now all he wants to do is share these kind of second thoughts concerning his choice, with his readers.
But this is not exactly the case of the poem ‘In ‘the Road not Taken’. In this poem the reader meets a man standing in front of two roads. The opening image of the poem is that of a man standing there, before ‘two roads diverged in a yellow wood’. In the first stanza the narrator addresses the reader in first person and shares his experience ‘And sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler, long I stood’.The motif of the isolated traveler, of the wanderer who draws his life and makes his own way is here, vivid and alive.
The traveler stands before two roads and he seems to have not got the slightest idea on which road to pick so that he can go on with his journey. The whole procedure of looking for the right answer in himself, is depicted in the following stanzas of the poem. ‘And he looked down, one as far as I could / To where it bent in the undergrowth / Then took the other, as just as fair / And having perhaps the better claim’ writes Frost in his second stanza.
The reader witnesses the traveler’s dilemma for real. Both roads are so alike. They are similar so there is really no way to make the right or wrong choice. The reader gets the impression that one road must be chosen so one is chosen just by luck. Both roads opening their paths in front of the narrator seem equally worn, since ‘Though as for that, the passing there / Had worn them really about the same / And both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black.’
So the narrator chooses one of the two roads appearing exactly the same and reaches his last years of life in the last stanza where he shares a kind of confession with his readers. ‘ I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence / Two roads diverged in a wood and I - / I took the one less traveled by / And that has made all the difference.’
So the narrator shares his personal truth. He will say that the road he chose was the less traveled by. This is something he will say with a sigh. Why? Because he really does not know whether or not he should have chosen another path.
It seems that Frost aims at raising the question which still remains unanswered. When people are asked to choose their paths, what is the most crucial factor affecting their choices? And the most important question lies in one’s choice is what would have happened differently if one had chosen something else than what he first chose.
The narrator of the poem seems to feel puzzled and not be able to give an answer to this question. He probably wants to say that the journey of one’s life is in a way predestined by factors which are not and cannot be predestined by humans. There is this mystery in human life predefined by mysterious forces like fate and luck. There is even lots to be said in the field of how free one is to choose paths and routes in his / her life. According to the narrator there is really no need in feeling remorse for our choices, in feeling that if one path had been chosen differently things would have come out different.
The narrator seems to believe that either way the painful truth remains. No one can ever know for sure what his / her life would be like if chosen differently. It could be better or it could be worse. But there is always a sigh when looking back in life. There is this sigh as a means of defending against the possibility that one failed because he chose this particular path and not the other.
One way or the other the journey in life remains the same in terms of entailing equal difficulties, failures, and / or successes. This is what the journey in life is according to Frost.
Bibliography
Brodsky, J., Seamus H. and Derek W. (1996), Homage to Robert Frost. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Defusco, A. (1999), Readings on Robert Frost, San Diego: Greenhaven Press, Inc.
Oster, J. (1991), Toward Robert Frost: The Reader and the Poet. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgis Press
