Analysis Of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken

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“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is a very simple yet very symbolic poem. It’s a poem regarding various choices that one has to make in life and then live by the outcomes of the decisions made. The consequences of ones choices might turn out to be positive or negative but these decisions have a significant impact in the way one’s life turns out to be.
The poet, Robert Frost, begins the poem with describing a walk in the forest on a fall day as the leaves are turning yellow. As he walks, the road forks and comes a moment of decision regarding which direction to take. This is a metaphor for the times in life when one has to choose one path or decision over another. Making this decision is difficult for him and he thinks for a long time before choosing the path. He wishes that he could split in two and take both paths instead of having to choose only one. Likewise, how many times in life, it becomes so difficult to choose one thing over another. And one wishes to have both options available but unfortunately one can only choose one option. The speaker tries to look ahead as far as he can see for some cues. But all he sees is the road disappearing into the bushes, giving him no idea of what was behind it. This relates to times in life where one attempts to discover and uncover things, trying their level best to make a decision based on facts. However life doesn’t always present everything together, in a foreseeable manner, for one to make the decision based on those facts. At that point, one has to go by their instinct and choose what seems right at that moment given the information available to them. In the second stanza, the speaker decides to take the other road and unveils to the audience that he made that choice because the other road seemed grassier. Therefore, it was possibly better because it was less traveled. Although when he started travelling, he realized that there wasn’t a significant difference in the wear and tear as compared to the other road (“Had worn them really about the same”). The third stanza tells the reader that the time of the day is morning (“that morning equally lay”). He also reemphasizes the fact that the paths seemed equal and also explains the reason why he continued on the road that he chose at first. It’s because he knew that one path would lead to another to another (“way leads on to way”), making it very difficult to go back to where his journey started. Moreover, he believes that he will never go back and kept on following the path that he had initially chosen. This brings to light the metaphorical meaning of decisions that we make in life. How one decision that we make leads us to other decisions, leading us to different options, making it almost impossible to undo the initial decision taken. Therefore, we have no
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Life’s choices and decisions are compared to roads and forks in the path. He specifically points out that the paths were almost identical, this symbolizes that in life one has to make choices without having much knowledge of what we are choosing between and how that will impact our future. The lines “And looked down one as far as I could and “To where it bent in the undergrowth” are a metaphor for how we cannot look ahead to see where the choice we make might lead us in the future. Another important theme is irony. The line “I will be saying this with a sigh” shows the speakers remorse about making that choice. The irony is also reflected where he thinks he chose the right path but throughout his life keeps on wondering how things would have turned out to be different if he would have taken the other path, especially when there wasn’t any evident difference between the two. In fact the title of the poem “The Road Not Taken” emphasizes the lost opportunities as a result of not taking the other path. In taking one path over the other, he lost his chance to take the other one and the outcomes that would have resulted from taking the other

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