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Karen Acker
Ms. Compton
English 9 Honors
22 February 2011
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title
Robert Frost and “The Road Not Taken”
The choices one makes in life can have a far-reaching impact. This importance
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of making choices is illustrated by Robert Frost, a well-known poet from the early 20th
century who wrote “The Road Not Taken”, a poem that uses rhyme, imagery and
metaphor. Frost’s background influenced his decision to explore choices in life, which is
enhanced through the literary devices used.
Robert Frost’s life was one of hard work, but he became one of America’s most
The information
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not directly
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read poets. Frost was born in San Francisco, California, in 1874 (Poets). He attended
high school in Laurence, Massachusetts, and went on to college at Dartmouth and
Harvard (Poets). He had his first poem “Butterfly” published in 1894 (Poets). In 1895
Frost married Elinor Miriam White (Poets) and together they had six children (two of
whom died in infancy) (Nelson). Frost worked as a teacher, cobbler, editor and farmer,
but his ambition mostly involved writing poetry (Poets). In 1912 the family moved to
England but returned in 1915 due to the outbreak of World War I (Nelson). “Abroad
Frost met and was influenced by contemporary poets . . . and established a friendship
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quotes.
with Ezra Pound . . .” (Poets). After more attempts at farming, “Frost’s move to Amherst
in 1917 launched him on a two-fold career he would lead for the rest of his life: teaching
and ‘barding around,’ his term for ‘saying’ poems in conversational performance.”
(Nelson). While continuing his work as a poet, between 1938 and 1940, he suffered the
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loss of his youngest child, his wife and a son (Nelson). Despite this sorrow, Frost
persevered with his work and “by the nineteen-twenties, he was the most celebrated poet
in America.” (Poets). During his life he won four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry and spoke at
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the inauguration of President Kennedy (Nelson). Robert Frost died in Boston on January
29, 1963. His lifetime of accomplishments has earned him the title of “The American
Bard” (Poets).
One piece of poetry that helped to make Frost popular was “The Road Not Taken”
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poetry
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written in 1916 (The Road). The theme of this poem involves the choices people make in
life. In stanza one, the traveler is at a place where “Two roads diverged in a yellow
wood,” (l. 1) and he needs to choose a path. As the poem moves into stanza 2, the
traveler looks down both paths and observes that one may be slightly more worn, but they
seem “really about the same,” (l. 10). In stanza three, the traveler chooses a path, hoping
to follow the other on another day, but “doubted if I should ever come back” (l. 15).
Finally, in the last stanza, the traveler looks back on that day and says the path he chose,
the less traveled one, “has made all the difference” (l. 20). This poem can relate to
individual lives in that all people make choices. Sometimes the results of these choices
are good and sometimes bad, but the person often wonders what would have happened if
other choices had been made. Additionally, as the poem states, taking the path “less
traveled by” (l. 19) or choosing to not always follow what everyone else is doing can
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have a huge impact on one’s life. This theme of making your own decisions is aided by
the use of literary devices in Frost’s poem.
“The Road Not Taken” uses the literary devices of rhyme, imagery and metaphor.
The rhyme pattern of this poem is abaaab cdccd efeef ghggh. Using this pattern fits
Frost’s style of using “traditional verse forms” (Poets). The imagery in the piece
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describes the woods where the poem is set. Words and phrases such as “yellow wood”
(l.1), “undergrowth” (l. 5), “grassy and wanted wear” (l. 8) and “in leaves no step has
trodden black” (l. 12) give the reader a picture of a wooded area with paths for walking.
Two of the paths are similar as they venture deeper into the woods, and are covered in
leaves that morning. Finally, the poem is an example of a metaphor in that it compares
choosing a path to walk on in the woods to choosing a path in one’s own life. In both
cases, decisions must be made that will affect the future, a message given to all by
“America’s Bard” (Poet).
Robert Frost is a well-known poet who lived a life of hard work, but will always
Conclusion
summarizes your
main
ideas
be remembered for his inspirational poetry. Works like “The Road Not Taken” which
uses rhyme, imagery and metaphor, gives the reader a message about making choices in
life. “The most celebrated poet in America” (Poet) is a man who made poetry relevant to
people everywhere.
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Title of
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Works Cited
Nelson, Cary, ed. Modern American Poetry. 2002. Department of English, University of
Sources
are
alphabe
tized
based
on the
first
word of
the cite.
Illinois At Urbana-Champaign. 19 Feb. 2008
<http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/life.htm>.
"Poets.Org-Poetry, Poems, Bios and More." 2008. The Academy of American Poets. 19
Feb. 2008 <http://www.poets.org/printpoet.php/prmPID/192>.
"The Road Not Taken." Representative Poetry Online. 2002. RPO Editors, Department
Hanging
indents
of English and University of Toronto Press. 19 Feb. 2008
<http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/854.htm>.