robert frost the road not taken analysis

He can’t judge his experience even after taking the second road because he doesn’t know how things would have turned out if he had taken the first.

Making a Meaning out of Life: In “The Road Not Taken,” the poet must pick between two paths without knowing exactly how they differ.The speaker implies that he or she favors individualism over conformity by choosing the less-traveled way over the well-traveled path. The splitting roads might be interpreted as a metaphor for two types of life choices in general: conventional and otherwise. Independence and Non – conformity: When given an option between two routes, the poet selects the one that looks to be little less traveled.The final statement serves as a subliminal reminder that the only thing one can know about one’s life choices is that they “make all the difference.” You will make many decisions in your life, and each one will elicit a variety of thoughts about what might have happened if you had made a different decision. The poet eventually chooses a path based on which appears to be less traveled, yet the poem demonstrates that this decision does not solve the speaker’s problem. The poem explores the nature of choices and what it means to be forced to choose. His decision serves as a metaphor for all the decisions that people must make in their lives. The Uncertainty of Choices: In “The Road Not Taken,” the poet must choose between two options.“The Road Not Taken” leaves a message that choice is unavoidable. When faced with a choice between two roads, the speaker in the poem chooses the “less traveled,” a decision that he or she believes “made all the difference.” However, Frost leaves enough room for interpretation in the poem to make it unclear whether the speaker’s judgment should be taken at face value, and thus whether the poem is about the speaker making a simple but impactful choice, or about how the speaker interprets a choice whose impact is unknown. The poem actually has multiple interpretations. “The Road Not Taken,” written in England in 1915, is one of Robert Frost’s - and the world’s - most well-known poems, as well as one of the most misunderstood. Frost complained to Thomas shortly after writing the poem in 1915 that he had read it to a group of college students and that it had been “received very seriously… although doing my best to make it evident by my manner that I was joking.” “I apologize.” When they went for a walk together, Thomas was perpetually undecided about which road they should take and frequently lamented that they should have taken the other. “The Road Not Taken” was written by Robert Frost as a joke for a friend and poet, Edward Thomas. He claims that when faced with a choice between two routes, he selected the less frequented road, and the repercussions of that decision have made all the difference in his life. With a sigh, the poet imagines himself in the far future, relating the story of deciding which path to choose. He then declares that he or she is simply saving the first road and will travel it at a later time, but then immediately contradicts himself by admitting that, in life, one road tends to lead onward to another, making it unlikely that he will ever get a chance to return to that first road. READ ALSO: Meet Arthur Conan Doyle, the Creator of Sherlock Holmes He emphasizes this point by stating that both roadways were covered with leaves that had not yet been stained black by foot activity. Though, now that he has walked on the second road, he believes that the two roads must have been roughly similar in wear and tear. The poet chooses the other way, deeming it to be just as excellent as the first and even suggesting that it may be the best alternative of the two because it is grassy and appears to be less worn. However, because the forest is deep and the road is not straight, he cannot see very far.

He pauses at the fork in the road for a long time, trying to see which path leads to where. He becomes unhappy that he cannot walk on both ways (because he is only one person).

While strolling through a forest whose leaves have gone yellow in the autumn, the poet comes to a fork in the road. The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost | Literary Analysis

Robert frost the road not taken analysis