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Choose one of the essays that you have written in this class. Research and follow the paper guidelines.

In addition to conforming strictly to the MLA guidelines for format, your essay will include flawless grammar, cogent reasoning, precise textual evidence, a compelling conclusion, AND citations from the text to back up your assertions.

Audience:

people who, though familiar with the stories that you’re examining, may need a little reminding about particular events, and who are willing to be persuaded by your interpretation

Purpose:

to present a compelling argument in which you provide plenty of textual evidence in support of your thesis, that is, your interpretation

Format:

Your essay should conform to the MLA standards for format and citations. If you would like to brush up on this format (with which, having already taken 1117 or the equivalent, you should be intimately familiar), consult the MLA section in our textbook or in your grammar handbook.

Length:

six to eight typed pages (double-spaced, one-inch margins)


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Running head: THE ROAD NOT TAKEN The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost Name of student Institutional affiliation 1 THE ROAD NOT TAKEN 2 The Road Not Taken Introduction Robert Frost’s poetry still remains to be one of the strongest modes of expressions in the field of literature. At the nexus of The Road Not taken, abodes the need to make a decision and pick one choice over the other. As a consequence, the speaker does choose one path over the other and goes ahead to opine that this did make all the difference. The junction in this case can be seen to have a fork-like nature where all that can be seen are the two paths headed in different directions. In it also important to note that whichever path one chooses, what to encounter only lies in the exploration. There is no guide as to how to choose either of the two, it is a matter of intuition or the consequences are based on the same. As a projection of life—everything is a matter of taking a leap in faith. Analysis Among the poems written by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken is probably one of the most popular and ambiguous works. Published in the 1916’s collection Mountain Interval, the poem has wielded immense popularity and nearly become a hallmark of American culture, being used in commercials, slogans and television series (Orr). Frost’s work written on the rise of modernism is often dissected into “irreducible bits" by the modern audience and “lives on in calendars, greeting cards, advertisements, journalistic allusions, sermons, graduation speeches, casual conversations, and private conceptions of self” (Savoie 5). However, the poem is often misunderstood due to its ambiguity: in the poem, the speaker finds himself at the parting of the roads and faces a difficult choice. Having chosen one of the roads, the speaker ruminates on this choice stating that he will tell this story years and years later stressing that the chosen road “made all the difference” (Frost). The poem is often interpreted in two ways: an optimistic view promoting decisiveness for the sake of a better THE ROAD NOT TAKEN 3 outcome and a regretful admission of impossibility of choosing both roads (Finger 479). In the present essay, an attempt to interpret the poem in a more thoughtful way will be made through careful analysis of its components. The Road Not Taken could be defined as a narrative poem due to a rather clearly outlined story presented by the speaker. Frost’s speaker tells the story of his own experience of encountering the forking roads in the woods: “Long I stood / And looked down one as far as I could” (Frost). However, if one takes a closer look at the structure and contents of the poem, lyrical elements will stand out – the speaker not just retells the events but also pays much attention to his emotional experience, feelings and thoughts. In playing the emotions, feelings and experience card, one can decipher the level of effort that goes into trying to make such a decision. One of the first elements the reader notices right away is the author’s careful choice of denotations and connotations, that is, the elaborate word choice that shapes both the narrative and the tone of the poem. Frost uses rather simple words in the poem, releasing the reader from the need to turn to the dictionary for help: the skeleton of the poem is made up by such lexemes as “road”, “leaves”, “day”, “morning”, “difference”, “diverge” and “take”. Simple and neat word choice makes the poem rather close and comprehensible for the reader and hints at the trivial nature of the situation described in it. However, the multicolored array of feelings and moods is created by the connotations of these words: Frost uses common words to create elaborate metaphorical meanings. For example, use of color metaphors is visible in the poem. Already in the first line, the reader encounters “yellow woods”, which hints at the serenity and grace of autumn. On the other hand, Frost uses “black” with a rather negative connotation, uniting this lexeme with “tread”: “leaves no step had trodden black” (Frost) are perceived as pure and intact, virgin in a sense. In the first and last stanzas, the roads “diverge”, which means that they take different directions. However, another meaning THE ROAD NOT TAKEN 4 of this word (which strengthens ambiguity in the poem) is “to become or be different in character or form” (Merriam-Webster). That is, the two roads might be perceived as different and leading to different destinations. Another word used by the author to characterize the road is “wear”, which is used as both a participle and a noun. The path chosen by the speaker “wanted wear”, and “passing […] had worn” the road. The connotation found in the dictionary states that “wear” is “to exhaust or lessen the strength of” something (Merriam-Webster), and this connotation endows the speaker’s decision to tread this path with a less positive and affirmative air. The speaker’s doubts are amplified by the use of such words as “doubt”, “perhaps” and “sigh”. Ambiguity of the feelings caused by the choice is proved the blurred connotation of the word “sigh” in this poem. As “sigh” is commonly defined as “an often involuntary act of sighing especially when expressing an emotion or feeling (such as weariness or relief)” (MerriamWebster), the reader might get somewhat confused about the outcome of the speaker’s choice. If interpreted from the aspect of sighing as a result of the weariness, one gets the feeling that the speaker is actually worn out by having to pick through his mind to find the appropriate path to follow. If interpreted as an act of relief, it is basically in the sense of having taken a huge load of one’s shoulder by resolving the dilemma and embarking on the journey. However ambiguous this might be, it is important to note that it is very personal and any user of the poem will definitely fit in. The lyrical element of the poem reveals itself immediately in the poem as the speaker turns out to tell about his own experience complementing this story with his own feelings. According to one version, the speaker in the poem is Frost’s friend Edward Thomas, and the reader sees him as a person uncertain about his decisions and apparently prone to regrets. It is never stated in the poem that the outcome of the choice was positive, Frost only notes that this choice made “all the difference” (Frost). The narrator’s indecisiveness and proclivity to THE ROAD NOT TAKEN 5 regrets are also shaped by the recurrent statements about equality of the roads (which is also achieved by the use of several metaphors). It is difficult to overlook that the speaker insists on the fact that the roads were actually equal: Frost uses such metaphors as “just as fair”, “equally lay” and “worn really about the same” emphasizing the equal value of both options. The personality of the narrator (as expressed through the lexical choices and the course of the narrative) affects the tone of the poem. The air of doubt and regret reveals itself already in the first stanza of the poem where the speaker states: “And sorry I could not travel both” (Frost). In the second stanza, the speaker makes the choice and treads one of the roads, but he is not certain about his choice even now, for he states that the chosen path had “perhaps the better claim” (Frost). While the second path was chosen, the first one was “kept for another day”; and the speaker expresses his doubt again, as for coming back to the fist path this time. In my perception, the tone of The Road Not Taken is utterly uncertain and doubtful as the speaker reiterates his doubts again and again in the course of the narrative. The beauty of this uncertainty lies in how realistic it is. Frost manages to capture the exactness of how decisions make us feel. Firstly we are relieved or wearied, after which we have to contend with whether the choice was the right one and there is the slightest possibility to pick the other one. Robert Frost does not make frequent use of sensual imagery in the poem; however, there are still words and metaphors appealing to the reader’s senses and intensifying impressions. The author appeals to visual perception by using color adjectives such as “yellow” and “black”; words like “grassy”, “undergrowth” and “leaves”, in turn, reflect the sensual experience of walking in the woods. However, Frost does not provide much sensual imagery, and the reader constructs sensual experience based on the scarce aid provided by him in the first three stanzas. In my perception, sensual experience conveyed in the poem ends after the speaker chooses the road, for the rest of the poem is more or less dominated by his reflections THE ROAD NOT TAKEN 6 and doubts, which are rather abstract. The limited use of sensual imageries is another strength of this masterpiece. Frost does understand that how people visualize scenarios has a sense of vivid and differential subtlety and he explores this very element. He leave it to the reader to curate images, to place the exact shade of the snow, to paint the grass and leaves. As a consequence, one gets the feeling that the poem has a sense of transcendence to it. A reader who interacted with it during Frost’s time will clear have their own perfection of their environment as it is with a modern reader. As it has been mentioned, Frost is rather ascetic and neat in his choice of words and figures of speech: the reader does not encounter any complex language devices throughout the poem, which makes it outstanding in its simplicity. However, there are still a number of figurative expressions that make the narrative more elaborate. In addition to the mentioned color metaphors, Frost uses personification when describing the road: it “has […] a better claim” and “wants wear”. However, the most outstanding figure of speech used in The Road Not Taken is oxymoron, and it is not limited to a certain phrase or stanza but is built up throughout the entire poem. The speaker contradicts himself several times: he either stresses equality of the roads (as illustrated above) or states that one of them was “less travelled by” and “made all the difference” (Frost). These interchanging contradictory statements make the tone of the poem even more doubtful and uncertain. It can also be stated that the entire premise of one of the roads being less travelled does work into how the choice on which road to take was arrived at by the speaker. At one instant, the one less travelled has a chilly atmosphere to it which is intriguingly scary. On the other hand, one can easily rush to take the road most travelled as means of avoiding any risks which in itself is very escapist. Depending on the person making the decision, it is always about how one perceives the environment—some people are adventurous whilst others do try to find an easy way out. THE ROAD NOT TAKEN 7 Speaking about the form of the poem, The Road Not Taken is written in iambic tetrameter. However, the lines are hypermetric and contain nine instead of eight syllables: “And both that morning equally lay” (Frost). The poem has four stanzas, while only the last stanza begins with a new sentence (this might hint at the purpose to make the concluding stanza stand out). In contrast to the meter, the poem’s rhyme scheme is rather stable. Each five-line stanza has the A-B-A-A-B rhyme pattern, and the lines are rhymed primarily with the help of assonance and consonance in some places. A good example is the following stanza: A “I shall be telling this with a sigh B Somewhere ages and ages hence: A Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— A I took the one less traveled by, B And that has made all the difference.” (Frost) In the cited stanza, one can identify assonance between “sigh”, “I” and “by” and consonance between “hence” and “difference”. As this instance is the only point where words are rhymed with the help of consonance, it seems that Frost wanted to emphasize the word “difference” and complete the message of the poem in this way. Depending on the character and the emotional state of the reader, the poem can be interpreted either pessimistically or optimistically. However, I would say that there is no black and white in the poem, and the message of this poem is rather ambiguous if deprived of any context. The entire poem is weaved of regrets and controversies: the speaker regrets that he cannot go both ways, states that both roads are equal, then affirms his choice of the second road and then – with a sigh – tells that this choice made the difference for him. As this poem is deeply interconnected with the culture of American modernity, I would offer a more complex interpretation of its message. THE ROAD NOT TAKEN 8 Conclusion However much this poem is branded as being ambiguous in its context, it remains a masterpiece. This can be attributed to how it juxtaposes all the entire facets on human existence. Humans do ponder on choices each and every minute and depending on personalities and past experiences, it is always a matter of one person making a decision that is the exact opposite of what another makes and both parties, inadvertently, getting away with it. The poem can be perceived as a typical reflection of the human nature: we are often prone to blame ourselves for choices made in the past when any challenges emerge on our life path. Self-deception typical for humans often makes us perceive choices and hardships in the wrong way and act irrationally, just as the speaker of the poem did choosing the less traveled one of the two equal roads. Therefore, it seems that the poem is both a hymn of regret and a motivation to face choices fearlessly. Reading Frost’s poem, I realize that the decision that makes difference should be faced with responsibility and readiness to overcome all challenges that might emerge as one treads the chosen path. THE ROAD NOT TAKEN 9 References Finger, Larry L. “Frost's ‘The Road Not Taken’: A 1925 Letter Come to Light.” American Literature, vol. 50, no. 3, 1978, pp. 478–479., www.jstor.org/stable/2925142. Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” Web. April 30, 2017. Merriam-Webster. Dictionary. Web. April 30, 2017. < https://www.merriam-webster.com/ > Orr, David. “The Most Misread Poem in America.” The Paris Review (Sep 11, 2015). Web. April 30, 2017. < https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/09/11/the-mostmisread-poem-in-america/ > Savoie, John. “A Poet's Quarrel: Jamesian Pragmatism and Frost's ‘The Road Not Taken.’” The New England Quarterly, vol. 77, no. 1, 2004, pp. 5–24., www.jstor.org/stable/1559684.
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Student’s Name
Professor’s Name
Course
Date
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost is a poem described by a traveler who comes up
against two roads. These roads represent the excursion of life and the choices we make on that
trip. The narrator chose the way that looked adventurous because a great number of us
demonstrate the passion and desire for nature, distinction and experience. This poem was
gathered in Mountain Interval (1916), and it genuinely accounts about making choices. The
roads partition, yet the self can't be isolated, so the narrator needs to make a decision.
Robert Frost states that the roads are thought to be an image of his life choices. The
reality that Frost utilized this picture to depict the message makes us have an unmistakable
thought of what he is experiencing. As the poem concludes, indications of disappointment are
perceived, how in life a choice can indeed affect your life and how you progressed toward
becoming a man. At the end, we have discovered that the trouble of decisions is that occasionally
you truly need to give destiny a chance to lead the pack. Those ways demonstrate that it doesn't
make a difference which side has been taken however, which is the best one for you.
Life is comprised of decisions. The decisions individuals make in their lifetime shape
their life, as well as they can represent the deciding moment it. Now and again a man is offered a
momentous choice that will choose the way of their whole life. As yet, knowing a decision

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should be made does not make it simple to choose. In this line, "sorry… couldn't travel both",
Robert Frost does not know which road to take, what choice to make. He just realizes that he
can't travel both. However, hesitation is a piece of the magnificence of life. A portion of the best
decisions is consequence of careful thought. A man does not need to take the road of the ones
preceding them; they can make an altogether new way with an uncertain future. We must be
attentive and to pick the right way among the different ways life sets in our direction. This essay
is going to analyze the figurative aspects of literature utilized by Frost in coming up with a
complex but simple poem (Frost 82).
Analysis
The poem has four five-line stanzas with just two end rhymes in every stanza (abaab).The rhyme
scheme pattern is ABAAB; the rhymes are strict and manly, with the exceptional special case of
the last line. There are four focused on syllables for every line, changing on a versifying
tetrameter base. What's more, the fork in the road is an allegory for a decision. The speaker has
gone to a point in his life, where he can’t move a distance without settling on a choice that brings
him down one way and does not enable him to take the other. This is a developed metaphor since
the sum of the poem manages these choices. One of the literary devices employed is antithesis.
The first stanza of the poem portrays an explorer who goes to a fork in a road through a
"yellow wood" and wishes he could "travel both" courses, however in the meantime he
understands that the prospect of voyaging both roads is unrealistic and hence rejects it. In the
second stanza, the Voyager says the other road has “perhaps the better claim/because it was
grassy and wanted wear,” inferring that this street is "less gone by.” Then he negates his
judgment by saying that "However concerning that the going there/had worn them honestly
about the same." In the third stanza, he thinks of sparing to start with, (maybe) more voyaged

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course for one more day, yet then he sees that he's doubtlessly not going to return, and along
these lines, most likely will never have the opportunity to venture to every part of the more
voyaged course later on.
The line “Because it was grassy and wanted wear in the third stanza is a case of
personification because the artist says that the road "wanted wear" while we as a whole realize
that a road cannot think and would not have any longing whatsoever to wear out (Richardson
160). The artist has additionally utilized symbolism and imagery as a stylistic device: "Two
roads diverged in a yellow wood" (from the primary stanza), " and both that morning similarly
lay/in leaves no progression had trodden dark" (from the third verse) to make a photo in the
readers brain. The literal significance of the poem is that an explorer who went to a fork in a road
in a yellow wood and couldn't choose which road to take yet at long last chose the one that
appeared to be less gone by. The allegorical theme of the poem is the significant way of the
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