The Choices of Life
The choices that we make in life are never easy, and we face many of them in our lifetime. The poem "The Road Not Taken," by Robert Frost is a first person narrative poem in which Frost himself can be considered the speaker. A person walking in the woods is faced with the choice of two roads in which to take. "He would like to explore both roads. He tells himself that he will explore one and then come back and explore the other, but he knows that he will probably be unable to do so" (Arp 808). Through Frost's use of images and symbols, he is able to convey his theme that the choices a person makes in life are ultimately responsible for their future, yet a person can never go back to the past and experience other possibilities. As Frost begins his poem about the road he did not take, he is standing in the woods looking at two different roads that diverge in a yellow wood. "The two roads that "diverged in a yellow wood" represent a critical choice between two ways of life" (Ogilvie 3). If he travel's down one, it leads in one direction, if he takes the other, it leads him somewhere different. "Words are symbols of concepts, which have acquired connotation of feeling in addition to their denotation of
The third stanza begins interestingly by saying "And both that morning equally lay, in leaves no step had trodden black" (Arp 807). This could be interpreted as meaning that both paths are really about equal, and the few people whom did choose to take the road less traveled, did not come across any difficulties. "Oh, I kept the first for another day" (Arp 807), seems to suggest that the traveler plans to return, on a different day, and find out where that path leads. The last two lines of this stanza, the speaker realizes that the decision to take the other path was not just a temporary one, and he could not come back. This is where the speaker realizes that the path he chooses now, will affect every decision that he makes from this day forward. concept" (Greenberg and Hepburn 137). Frost uses these words, about two different roads as a symbol, of the choices we make in our everyday lives. The fork in the road represents the speaker's encounter of having to choose from two paths a direction that will affect the rest of his life. "And sorry I could not travel both" (Arp 807), Frost goes on to say; because the speaker wishes that he could experience both paths. In the next three lines Frost seems to give us some advice on making choices. He suggests that we should look at both choices very carefully, before we choose one, to look down both paths as far as we can, and try to make the best decision. Frost, through his use of poetic devices, has brought out his theme about the choices we make in life. "This is one of many of
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Approximate Word count = 1034
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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