#Work cited for robert frost the road not taken analysis trial#

#Work cited for robert frost the road not taken analysis trial#

In Robert Frost: The Trial by Existence, Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant locates in Frost’s letter Crossing Paths the source for “The Road Not Taken. Now I will focus on some commentary from a few authors who knew Robert Frost more intimately than I do, and are well more qualified to provide analysis of his poem. One of the great aspects of literature is that anyone can get just about anything they want to from any one piece of literature. At least, this is what I personally take away from the reading of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. ” In this poem there is no judgment, no specificity, no moral but simply a narrator who makes a decision in their life that affects the rest of its course. “I took the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference. The traveler, however, remains proud of the decision and recognizes that it was the paths chosen that made life turn out the way is has. He or She realizes that at the end of life, “somewhere ages and ages hence”, the speaker will have regrets about having never gone back to explore the road not taken. ” At the end of The Road Not Taken, regret hangs over the traveler.

The desire to travel down both paths is expressed and not unusual, but the speaker of this poem realizes that the decision is not just a temporary one and “…doubted if I should ever come back. This may be because of a feeling of unhappiness that was experienced by copying the actions of those before him or her, instead of making an individual decision. When the traveler finally decides, the lines: “Then took the other, just as fair And having perhaps the better claim Because it was grassy and wanted wear,” possibly describe the speaker’s innate desire to not necessarily follow the crowd. The speaker realizes that much like anyone making any kind of decision, their destiny cannot be seen, only the choices they can make. “And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stoodĪnd looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the under growth ” As much as he or she may strain his or her eyes to see as far as the road stretches, eventually it surpasses his or her vision and he or she can never see where it is going to lead. In an attempt to make a decision, the traveler looks down one road as far as he or she can. The road that will be chosen leads to the unknown, as does any choice made in life. Frost begins The Road Not Taken by creating a mental image of a traveler stopped at a fork in a path, much like a person who is trying to make a difficult decision.

The poem simply takes a satirical look at the uncertainty of having to make choices at all, but one might argue that it urges readers, not to forge new roads, but to take pride in the ones they have already chosen. Many scholars believe that Frost was too ambivalent in his descriptions of the two roads, and have therefore challenged the existence of a less traveled road.