|
Filler Content
Robert Frost on his own poetry:
"One stanza of 'The Road Not Taken' was
written while I was sitting on a sofa in the
middle of England: Was found three or four
years later, and I couldn't bear not to
finish it. I wasn't thinking about myself
there, but about a friend who had gone off
to war, a person who, whichever road he
went, would be sorry he didn't go the other.
He was hard on himself that way."
Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, 23 Aug.
1953
meaning:
The literal meaning of this poem by Robert
Frost is pretty obvious. A traveler comes to
a fork in the road and needs to decide which
way to go to continue his journey. After
much mental debate, the traveler picks the
road "less traveled by."
The figurative meaning is not too hidden
either. The poem describes the tuogh choices
people stand for when traveling the road of
life. The words "sorry" and "sigh" make the
tone of poem somewhat gloomy. The traveler
regrets leaves the possibilities of the road
not chosen behind. He realizes he probably
won't pass this way again.
devices:
There are plenty literary devices in this
poem to be discovered. One of these is
antithesis. When the traveler comes to the
fork in the road, he wishes he could travel
both. Within the current theories of our
physical world, this is a non possibility
(unless he has a split personality). The
traveler realizes this and immediately
rejects the idea.
Yet another little contradiction are two
remarks in the second stanza about the road
less traveled. First it's described as
grassy and wanting wear, after which he
turns to say the roads are actually worn
about the same (perhaps the road less
traveled makes travelers turn back?).
personification:
All sensible people know that road don't
think, and therefore don't want. They can't.
But the description of the road wanting wear
is an example of personifiction in this
poem. A road actually wanting some as a
person would.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970
by Leslie Frost Ballantine.
"When you arrive at a fork in the road, take
it."
- Yogi Berra
|
