Analysis Of The Poem The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost

In this essay, I’m going to be writing about a poem called The Road Not Taken, By Robert Frost and 4 major points about this poem. The first point I’m going to writing about is mostly a biographical about the author, just so you can just get a background about his life. The second point I’m going to be writing about is the Historical events that have to do with the poem. That’s so we can figure out if there was any history that had made him decided to write this poem. The point I’m going to be making is the Critical events about the poem. We would wanna know critical things or events that had led up to him writing this poem. Last, I’m going to write about is the meaning of the poem, which I think is very important to know.

This poem I’m going to be talking about is the most known poem and probably the “most famous from Robert Frost”. “Frost was born in San Francisco. Roberts’s dad had died when he was only 11, when his dad passed away his mom and family had decided to move to Lawrence in Massachusetts. Frost graduated from Lawrence High School. 3 years later he got married to Elinor, with who he had 6 six children. He went to Dartmouth college for a little bit, he taught at grammar schools, worked at a mill, and served as a newspaper reporter. In 1912, he wasn’t really able to produce his poems too well. “Frost moved his family to a farm back in Buckinghamshire, England, where he wrote prolifically, attempting to perfect his distinct poetic voice.” ( Poetry for students, volume 2) “In 1912, Frost and Elinor decided to sell the farm in New Hampshire and move the family to England, where they hoped there would be more publishers willing to take a chance on new poets. Within just a few months, Frost, now 38, found a publisher who would print his first book of poems, A Boy’s Will, followed by North of Boston a year later. It was at this time that Frost met fellow poets Ezra Pound and Edward Thomas, two men who would affect his life in significant ways. He ended up dying in 1963.” (Biography, Robert Frost) I feel like Frost seemed like a good guy, he tried hard and never gave up his dreams.

This poem, it seems to have a lot of history in it. It seems to be about war. In a book, I had read about this poem it had said “The symbolism of the two roads in this poem can be applied to any number of the circumstances in life, and therefore we cannot identify any one particular meaning as the one that Frost has in mind” In 1916 when this was written, “changes of the great importance we occurring, both in the author’s life and in the social order of the entire Western world. “Early in his career as a poet, from 1912 to 1915, Frost and his family lived in England. When they moved back home, England was already involved in the war. The central question of the Road Not Taken reflects the position taken by the two countries.” (Poetry for students Volume 2) “The Road Not Taken” appears as a preface to Frost Mountain Interval, which was published in 1916 when Europe was engulfed in World War I; the United States would enter the war a year later. Thomas’s “Roads” evokes the legions of men who will return to the roads they left only as imagined ghosts”. This clearly had stated that this poem had to do with world war I. And that the “Road Not Taken” was a road, not most soldiers went down.

The third reasoning I’ll be talking about is the Critical events going on. A book, I read stated “ Although critics tend to agree about the thematic concerns of The Road Not Taken, They are less consistent in evaluating its success. John T. Ogilvie, in an article published in South Atlantic Quarterly, suggest that the road is a metaphor for writtly life and that the choice the speaker makes here “leads deeper into the wood” which “though they hold a sultry privacy, impose a stern isolation, an isolation endured not without cost” It also says “In this poem, she suggests that “rost acknowledge that life has limits, yet he indulges himself in the sentimental notion that we could be really different from what we have become. He treats romantic cliche on the level of the cliche; hence the appeal of the poem for many.” (Poetry for students volume 2) I had also read a few things on the internet and one website had said “The Road Not Taken” is one of Robert Frost’s most familiar and most popular poems. It is made up of four stanzas of five lines each, and each line has between eight and ten syllables in a roughly iambic rhythm; the lines in each stanza rhyme in an abab pattern. The popularity of the poem is largely a result of the simplicity of its symbolism: The speaker must choose between diverging paths in a wood, and he sees that choice as a metaphor for choosing between different directions in life. Nevertheless, for such a seemingly simple poem, it has been subject to very different interpretations of how the speaker feels about his situation and how the reader is to view the speaker. In 1961, Frost himself commented that “The Road Not Taken” is “a tricky poem, very tricky.” (Enotes The road not Taken Analysis)

The last I think is very important to know about this poem would have to be the meaning behind it all. I think Frost had a good point in writing this poem. ”The central message is that, in life, we are often presented with choices. When making a choice, one is required to make a decision. Viewing a choice as a fork in a path, it becomes clear that we must choose one direction or another, but not both.” (Owlcation, The Road Not Taken) This quote I had read on the internet is saying that people get to make a choice to go down a road. Obviously not a real road, but a road in life where they could have different outcomes and struggles along the way. But most people took the easy way out and don’t bother for the harder path because they either didn’t want to put up with it or maybe they weren’t up for the task. I had also read “this poem is not about taking the road less traveled, about individuality or uniqueness. This poem is about the road taken, to be sure, as well the road not taken, not necessarily the road less traveled. Any person who has made a decisive choice will agree that it is human nature to contemplate the ‘What if…’ had you made the choice you did not make.