The Road Not Taken Analysis Essay

Submitted By Mitch-Madgett

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Madgett 1 Life is full of choices, some predetermined, some decided on the spot. Sometimes there are monumental choices that will affect the rest of someone’s life, whether they know it or not. The poem, “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is about one of those special moments where one choice will change the course of one person’s life. The speaker believes that depending on the road a person decides to choose, their life will turn out for better or for worse. Frost uses rhythm and rhyme to make his point.

Without the use of rhythm and rhyme, Frost’s message would not be so perfectly conveyed. For the first stanza of the poem the rhyme scheme is ABAAB. “Yellow wood…lone I stood” (L.1 and L.3), “travel both… in the undergrowth” (L.2 and L.5). Lines one and three are examples of rhyme A while lines 2 and 4 are examples of rhyme B. “Just as fair…wanted wear”, these two lines use rhyme and rhythm to give the poem a beautiful song like quality. A person almost wants to read it out loud so they can savor the words. However, it is the last couple of lines of the poem that make it memorable. “Ages hence…all the difference” (L.17 and L.20) uses the B rhyme in stanza four to make the lines flow and incorporate the theme, that life is made up of choices, and sometimes the road less traveled leads to the better life or leads to a tough time in life.

Life is made up of choices. The choices people make in their lifetime not only shape their life, but they can make or break it. Every once in awhile a person is offered a monumental decision that will decide the path of their entire life. Still, knowing a choice needs to be made
Page 2 does not make it easy to decide. In this line, “sorry I could not travel both”(L.2), the speaker

The Road Not Taken Analysis

Choices, Uncertainty, and the Enigma of Decisions Made: An Analysis of “The Road Not Taken” Aracely Rivera Garcia Liberty University Choices, Uncertainty and the Enigma of Decisions Made: An Analysis of “The Road Not Taken” Many people read the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost and interpret it as a reflection of choices the author made. To do so, however, would imply that Frost revealed the intended meaning of this poem via the closing line of this classic literary piece, and while that…

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metaphor, it seems as if “The Road Not Taken” gets memorized without really being read. For this it has died the cliché’s un-death of trivial immortality. But you yourself can resurrect it from zombie-hood by reading it—not with imagination, even, but simply with accuracy. Of the two roads the speaker says “the passing there / Had worn them really about the same.” In fact, both roads “that morning lay / In leaves no step had trodden black.” Meaning: Neither of the roads is less traveled by. These…

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Making Choices: The Road Not Taken Rosheda Dillon Liberty University Making Choices: The Road Not Taken Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” the narrator in conflicted by which road that he wants to take. The poem is a very simple poem but the metaphor for the road being a choice in his life is not very simple. The road that he chooses to take is the road that determines his path in life. In the poem he is walking on an actual road but it is also a figurative road. He is faced with a decision…

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lonely person in a forest. Besides this, the speaker is always comparing the two roads, which explains how hard this decision is to take and how crucial it could be. Then why would this choice be so challenging if the text itself suggests the protagonist is an individualist? 2 To get a good life (socially and financially), people have to blend in; and if they don’t, they could miss opportunities. In “The Road Not Taken”, the speaker faces a difficult dilemma: Taking the path to blend in or taking…

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“The road not taken” in a metaphorical and literal manner there is critical decision to be made. While remorse was the emotion being represented by traveling through nature, the setting was portrayed. The temperament on both poems is alike, lonely and puzzled. Again, while both poems snap a reflecting state of mind, nature serves as the symbolic journey to show life and emotions. In the poem, “The road not taken” the speaker is walking through the woods where he comes to stop as “Two roads diverged…

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Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’ “Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.” Lyman Abbott In the poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ Robert Frost toys with the ideas of innocence and experience that one can relate to in his or her own life by the choices they have to make in their day to day lives. Like his other works that explore fundamental questions of existence, depicting the loneliness of an individual in an indifferent universe, the poem ‘The road not taken’ explores a…

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meaning. Denotation is the literal or primary meaning of a word, in contrast to the feelings or ideas that the word suggests. In the poems “The Road Not Taken” and “Choices” the author uses connotations and denotations. Both the connotation and denotation can contribute the essential message in poetry. First of all, the author of the poem “The Road Not Taken” uses connotations to develop the poem’s essential message. The way the author uses connotations to develop the poem’s essential message is by…

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is “The Road Not Taken”. Published in 1916, the lyric poem depicts how man’s decisions shape his quality of life. This depiction is shown through ambiguity, a view of daily life, and nature. Frost uses the literary devise of ambiguity in his poetry. In “The Road Not Taken”, a man takes the path of seeming non-conformity “and that has made all the difference” (l.20). This proves ambiguous because, as the critic Larry Finger states in his article Frost’s Readings of ‘The Road Not Taken’, “the last…

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