In the poem “The Road Not Taken”, Robert Frost describes an individual's struggle to make a choice between what is expected and what is different. Through Frost’s use of a strict, yet sometimes wavering meter along with an ABAAB rhyme scheme, the use of imagery and metaphors, and the contradiction Frost makes in the last stanza, he is able to portray the difficulty in making decisions and the outcome of those choices.
The meter of the poem would be considered to be iambic tetrameter, yet lines like “two roads diverged in a yellow wood” would be anapestic tetrameter, instead of a line like “in leaves no step had trodden black”. This occasional break in meter could be related to the protagonist’s indecisiveness of choosing a path to travel on. He focused his attention on the road that had been walked on by several others before turning his attention to the one that was “grassy and wanted wear”, this abrupt change in mentality relates to Frost’s use of a changing meter. While combining the aspect of meter with the rhyme scheme of ABAAB, this gives a reader a sense of the pace of the traveler’s footsteps. Making the poem overall more enjoyable to read because you feel as if you are going on this journey along with him/her, …show more content…
However, figuratively the poem’s introduction is nothing more than a metaphor to describe a person’s struggle to making a decision. The “two roads diverged in a yellow wood” represent the choices, while the rest of the poem describes one’s train of thought to arrive at a decision. For example, the lines “and looked down one as far as I could / to where it bent in the undergrowth” and “then took the other, as just as fair /and having perhaps the better claim” show how the protagonist arrives at his decision to take the path less
The meter of the poem would be considered to be iambic tetrameter, yet lines like “two roads diverged in a yellow wood” would be anapestic tetrameter, instead of a line like “in leaves no step had trodden black”. This occasional break in meter could be related to the protagonist’s indecisiveness of choosing a path to travel on. He focused his attention on the road that had been walked on by several others before turning his attention to the one that was “grassy and wanted wear”, this abrupt change in mentality relates to Frost’s use of a changing meter. While combining the aspect of meter with the rhyme scheme of ABAAB, this gives a reader a sense of the pace of the traveler’s footsteps. Making the poem overall more enjoyable to read because you feel as if you are going on this journey along with him/her, …show more content…
However, figuratively the poem’s introduction is nothing more than a metaphor to describe a person’s struggle to making a decision. The “two roads diverged in a yellow wood” represent the choices, while the rest of the poem describes one’s train of thought to arrive at a decision. For example, the lines “and looked down one as far as I could / to where it bent in the undergrowth” and “then took the other, as just as fair /and having perhaps the better claim” show how the protagonist arrives at his decision to take the path less