The Poem 'The Road Not Taken'

The poem «The road not taken» is written by Robert Frost. The poem begins with a dilemma about which path he should follow, whether if he should go with the mainstream or go alone. Eventually he chose the road to go alone, not knowing if it was the right choice or not. He keeps telling himself that he will return back and go the other road another day, but he dosent really know if he will ever be able to do that.

Life is a journey and sometimes you have to make decisions along the way. In this poetry we follow a person that has to make these decisions. Making big decisions is scary, and I think almost everyone would feel a slight of regret after making a big choice. You’re scared of making the wrong one, so you start regretting if the choice you made was right. I think this poem is for everyone, and almost anybody can relate. But I also think that the author is writing about himself. The poem is after all written in I-person, and there is only one traveler.

The poem contains four stanzas of five lines. At first I thought that there wasn’t any rhyme in the poem. But then I realized that there was. Every other line rimes. The rhyme scheme is ABAAB. Which means that the rhyme words at the ends of the lines makes a consonant sound. Here is an example from the poem:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

There is also something called enjambment, which makes the poem «flow» and sound really good.

There are a few metaphors in the poem. For example the road. The road is metaphor for life. And the fork on the road represents the choices we make in our lives. I would almost say that the whole poem is a metaphor for life, and life choices.

Personification is when you give an object or an animal human qualities. For example in this poem, the author wrote  «because it was grassy and wanted wear». The road has a desire, or something I wanted. Which it cannot «want».

In the poem the author describes the woods as yellow. That allows the reader to create an image. I certainly did. I was picturing what the woods looked like, and what it was like standing there.

He also mentioned that he sighs. That made me at least create an image in my head.

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