Dang
Kevin Dang
Professor Zucker
English A101 #36733
22 February 2018
Poetry Analysis
The poem, “ The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, was published in 1916. Robert Frost was born in 1874 and was an American poet who concentrated his attention on valuable life lessons instead of life tragedy. In this poem, the narrator is walking through the woods and stops when he encounters a fork in the middle of the road. The narrator is indecisive when it comes to making decisions, so he takes a minute to examines both roads. He comes to a conclusion that both of the roads are exactly the same and he does not know which route to take. The poet knows that the only wrong decision in this situation is to not go down a road at all. Before Thomas makes a decision, he wants to travel down both roads to see what may lie in the future. The poet tells himself that one day in the future, he would look back and say that he had taken the “road less traveled” (Frost). He thought it was a good idea to choose the road that people do not usually go down when he could have chosen the road where everyone chooses knowing the chances of getting harmed was less. He also realized that the chance of getting to go down the unchosen road is very slim. The theme of this poem is about how there will always be a choice in life. An example would be deciding where to go to college or even as simple as what to eat for dinner. But the key point is to understand that there will always be a choice to make in life. The author’s main purpose in writing this poem is to show every choice you make may impact your life, therefore, you have to choose very wisely.
1 Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
2 And sorry I could not travel both
3 And be one traveler, long I stood
4 And looked down one as far as I could
5 To where it bent in the undergrowth;
In the first stanza, the narrator begins to describe the setting of the poem. The denotative view would be that the hiking trail has split into two. While the connotation of the “two roads” is that there are two different choices and that each road would lead to a particular passage in life (Frost 1). It may seem that the narrator is just choosing a road to go through the woods but he is actually deciding the path to take through life. The “yellow” is that saying that the leaves are turning because it is fall (Frost 1). On the other hand, the woods represents life, therefore, the meaning of the “yellow woods” is that the narrator’s life is about to come to an end (Frost 1). Another term would be the “autumn” of life. This is showing how you have to be extra careful in making a decision in life because the wrong move can be your last. In line 5, the denotative view of “to where it bent the undergrowth…” is describing how far the road extends. While the connotation of this quote is representing how many opportunities await you down the path that you choose. This stanza is saying that you will hit many obstacles in no matter which path you t...
