The Road Not Taken

4 Pages 1093 Words

“The Road Not Taken”


In Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” the speaker stands in the woods, considering a split in the road. Both ways are similarly worn, and equally overlaid with un-trodden leaves. The speaker chooses one, telling himself that he will take the other another day. Yet he knows it is unlikely that he will have the chance to do so. And he admits that someday in the future he will recreate the scene with a slight twist: he will claim that he took the less-traveled road. The whole poem is an extended metaphor, where Frost describes a path in the woods that is directly comparable to a major decision in life. In this case, the narrator is “lost” in the poem, both on the trail, and in his life.
"The Road Not Taken" consists of four stanzas of five lines each having an identical rhyme scheme of ABAAB. The first, third, and fourth lines in every stanza rhyme, along with the second and fifth lines. Thus, allowing the poem to flow at a smoother and steadier pace. There are four stressed syllables per line, forming an iambic tetrameter base. The majority of the lines contain nine syllables. This structure is maintained through out the poem. The stanzas are arranged like that of a thought. One continues to undermine the other, much like decision making. Our first thoughts are always second-guessed by our second and so forth until we make our final decision, which cancels out all that was thought before. This is what Frost manages to do in the arrangement of his stanzas. Imagery is the primary concept of this work thus being the means used by Frost to transmit the poems message.
The two roads are each described in such a way that the reader can easy picture the dilemma faced by the traveler. Image is so precise that we can picture the first road bending to the right while the other bends in the opposite direction.
In the first stanza, (line 1) Frost introduces the elements of his primary metaphor: the diver...