The Road Not Taken Themes

The best loved of the American poets; Robert Frost (1874-1963) was born in USA. He is considered "The Voice of America". His poems begin in please and in wisdom.

Robert Frost finds himself at a point where the road splits into ii. He must make a decision. He chooses the grassy and less travelled path. The other route is more conventional, adventure free and well-traveled. The poet realizes that he tin't travel on both roads, so he keeps it for another twenty-four hour period.

He says that maybe he may use the more conventional path onetime in time to come, but it is non possible to start the journey afresh. Information technology seems to exist a feature of Robert Frost to express incertitude while making revolutionary decisions.

The striking feature of Frosts' poems is the presentation of conflicts. Here conflict is between the right choice and wrong choice. We should always have the courage to cull the right fashion fifty-fifty if it is rough and thorny. The poem makes us recall near option we must brand in life.

All of us achieve a crucial betoken in life when we must brand the correct pick. That choice determines our destiny. The poem inspires us to face the challenging realities in life. The principal theme of his poetry is an ambiguous relationship with nature. He is interested in the paradox of life. The phrase "some were ages and age hence" refers to a distant future. Here "sigh" should non be taken as regret.

However, Frost is very optimistic. He looks into a distant time to come. A small courageous pace makes a big deviation. It can atomic number 82 to a corking discovery, success, prosperity, or happiness. However, the line "… And that has made all the deviation" is non articulate. The poet beautifully leaves this to the imagination of the readers; Ambivalence is one of the striking features of Frost in poetry.

The Poem's Theme

'The Road Not Taken' is more a poem about someone trying to decide which road he's going to take on a stroll through the woods. Information technology is a poem nearly the journey of life. The two roads diverged in a yellow forest forest symbolizing a person'due south life. The narrator's choice about which road to have represents the different decisions we sometimes must brand and how those decisions will touch on the hereafter.

Retrieve of the expression, 'downwards the road', that we often employ to describe something that might happen months or even years from now, and you lot will see how Frost is making the connection between life and traveling. Frost captures the doubt virtually making decisions. Our natural desire to know what will happen considering of the decisions we make is in the first stanza of the verse form:

'Two roads diverged in a yellow forest
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked downwardly one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth'

Hither, Frost uses the bend in the road every bit a metaphor for what the narrator wishes he could see simply ultimately tin't make out in the undergrowth. The narrator eventually decides to take the other road because it really does non thing. Whichever path he chooses, he has no mode of knowing where he is going to finish up.

The only difference between the two roads is that the i the narrator chooses in the 2d stanza is 'grassy and wanted wear'; in other words, it doesn't expect like anyone's taken information technology before or in a long time. At this point in the poem, Frost tries to encourage readers to overcome the fear of the unknown: someone must be the starting time person to effort a new thing.

Verse form Analysis

The first significant thing virtually 'The Road Non Taken' is its title, which presumably refers to an unexercised selection, something about which the speaker can simply speculate.

The traveler comes to a fork in a road through a 'yellowish woods' and wishes he could somehow manage to 'travel both' routes; he rejects that aspiration as impractical, nonetheless, at to the lowest degree for the 24-hour interval at mitt.

The road he selects is 'the ane less traveled by,' suggesting the decision of an individualist, someone little non inclined to follow the crowd.

Most immediately, however, he seems to contradict his own judgment: "Though as for that the passing there/ Had worn them really virtually the same." The poet appears to imply that the decision is based on evidence that is, or comes close to being, an illusion; The contradictions continue.

He decides to save the first, (peradventure) more traveled route for another twenty-four hours just and then confesses that he does non think it probable that he will return. This implies that this seemingly coincidental and inconsequential choice is likely to exist a crucial commitment.

In the final stanza, the traveler says that he will exist "telling this with a sigh," which may connote regret. His choice, in any event, "has made all the difference". The tone of this stanza, coupled with the title, strongly suggests that the traveler, if not regretting his pick, at least laments the possibilities that the need to make a option.

Had Frost had a detail and irrevocable choice of his ain? If and then, what feeling in this poem of mixed feelings, should be regarded as dominant? There is no style of identifying such a specific decision from the evidence of the poem itself. Although a prejudice exists in favor of identifying the "I" of the verse form with the author in the absence of evidence to the reverse, the speaker may not be Frost at all.

On more than one occasion the poet claimed that this poem was about his friend Edward Thomas, a human inclined to indecisiveness out of a strong and (every bit Frost idea) agreeable habit of domicile on the irrevocability of decisions.

If then, the reference in the poem's final stanza to "telling" of the experience "with a sigh"/somewhere ages and ages hence" might exist read not only as the boast of Robert Frost, simply also as a perpetual revelation of Thomas, besides a fine poet. What is clear is that the speaker is, at least, a person similar Thomas in some respects (though in that location may well be some of Frost in him also).

Critics of this poem are probable always to contend whether information technology is an affidavit of the crucial nature of the choices people must brand on the road of life or a gentle satire on the sort of temperament that always insists on struggling with such choices.

The extent of the poets' sympathy with the traveler also remains an open up question. Frost composed this poem in four 5-line stanzas with only ii end rhymes in each stanza (abaab).

The flexible iambic meter has four strong beats to the line. Of the technical achievements in "The Road Not Taken", ane in particular shows Frost'south skill at enforcing pregnant through class. The verse form ends:

'Two roads diverged in a forest, and I—/ I took the i less traveled by / And that has made all the difference.'

The indecision of the speaker and his divided state of mind is heightened by the repetition of "I" split past the line sectionalization and emphasized by the rhyme and interruption. Information technology is an event possible only in a rhymed and metrical verse form and thus a good argument for the continuing viability of traditional forms.