The_Road_Not_Taken_by_Robert_Frost

The poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, taken from a literal stance is one that is about a person, most likely Frost himself, who is walking through the woods on an autumn’s day and has come toward two separate paths where the road diverges. The speaker contemplates on whether he should take one road or the other, and after a comprehensive examination at one road, he decides to take the other, the “one less travelled by”. The Road Not Taken is a magnificent poem where Frost’s discusses deeply about individualism and non-conformity. The speaker begins his poem with “Two roads diverge in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both”. This describes the path of life in which at one point, we will have to make a fundamental decision into how we want to spend the rest of our lives. He then goes on to say “And be one traveller, long I stood, And looked down one as far as I could, To where it bent in the undergrowth”. What the speaker is saying here is that he is looking down one road as far and as hard as he could to see where it will lead him too. The first stanza simply is describing him coming to a fork in the road where he takes his time in examining which direction he will go in. The second stanza opens with “Then took the other, as just as fair...” This mean that after the speaker had took a thorough inspection of one road; he decides to take the other. Possible evidence why he took the other road is because that particular road had more grass than the other, “because it was grassy and wanted wear” symbolising the love of nature, or in another sense had not been chosen to walk through as much as the other road where the grass is now dead and gone, ”I took the on less travelled by...”. This also represents how Frost is telling us that he is a person who does not follow the norm or has a consensus way of looking at things, but goes in direction which portrays individualism. But then the speaker says “Though as for that the passing there, Had worn them really about the same”. In contradiction to his previous statement, the speaker states “Though as for that the passing there, hard worn them really about the same”, which means the speaker is saying that both roads are actually equally covered with grass. The speaker then goes on to equivocate the poem by stating that both roads are covered in leaves, as during Autumn, the leaves would fall and cover the roads. It is also clear that the speaker is the first person at the point of the two roads as “In leaves no step had trodden black” means that no one has trodden of the leaves yet. And it is because of this that we now know, the speaker cannot make his decision and choosing which road to take based on which road has been travelled more or less by, as the grass is no longer visible under the cover of leaves. This contributes heavily on the poems ambiguity. In the third stanza, the speaker ponders about going back one day to the point where to road diverges and travelling on the one he did not take earlier. But then goes on to say “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back”. Meaning that he doubts it will ever be possible to ever turn back from the decision he made. The speaker wants to take both roads but as you choose a path one path to travel, the other door closes. The final stanza can be interpreted in many different ways. In my perspective “I shall be telling tis with a sigh”, the sigh is one of nostalgia and not of contentment, where the speaker may show signs of regret and wished he had taken the other road. “I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference”. What kind of difference is this' The way I interpret it, is that this is a negative difference where the outcome of taken the road less travelled by has not resulted in the desired outcome. The final stanza is contradictory to the lead up of the first three stanzas where we see the encouragement of going you own way, and not conforming to society’s conventions. The poem can even be seen as a paradox. The poem The Road Not Taken is a poem that incorporates ideas about individualism and non-compliance and has emphasis on the beauty of nature. It has strong imagery of nature where the speaker describes the road being covered by autumn leaves and the grass on each road. The speaker chooses the road where there is presumably more grass which represents nature but then says both roads are about the same which makes this poem ambiguous. It is because of these borrowed elements of Romanticism that Frost used in this poem, that make him part of the Romantic tradition. But even though there are strong messages of individualism, not conforming to society, the poem concentrates much on whether the right choice was made to go your own way and it would’ve been like if the speaker had taken the other road, as the poem is not about the road he took, but the road not taken.