The Road not Taken by Robert Frost - Essay Example

The Road not Taken by Robert Frost of the English of the Concerned September 22, Thesis ment: Robert Frost inthe poem The Road not Taken happens to resort to a figurative and metaphorical approach to elaborate on the essential contradiction between the free will and fate, thereby enunciating as to how the human destiny is shaped by both the decisions taken by the individuals and the dictates of fate. Outline I Introduction A Thesis Statement II The message inherent in the poem A Symbolism B Metaphorical sense III Who is the narrator A Personality of the poet B Mannerism IV Mood in the poem A Somber and grave B Rhyme Scheme V Conclusion The Road not Taken by Robert Frost There is no denying the fact that life is essentially about making choices and taking decisions.

The decisions that individuals do take in life do happen to have an impact over their future life. In fact, the process of decision making and its reverberations on the future life of an individual tends to be the theme of the poem The Road not Taken. Robert Frost in the poem The Road not Taken happens to resort to a figurative and metaphorical approach to elaborate on the essential contradiction between the free will and fate, thereby enunciating as to how the human destiny is shaped by both the decisions taken by the individuals and the dictates of fate.

The very first line of the poem tends to affiliate to both a literal and metaphorical setting, signifying a fork on the way that the poet comes across (Wilcox & Barron, 2000). The fork or the road splitting in the woods do seems to be representative of the decisions that an individual is required to make in one’s life. Thereby in a metaphorical context, the road talked about by the poet that splits in the woods is symbolic of the choices (Wilcox & Barron, 2000). The speaker has been able to lead one’s life so far, when one abruptly comes across a juncture in one’s life where one needs to make a choice that commits him to one path and prevents him from pursuing the second path as the poet says, “Two Roads diverged in a yellow wood/and sorry I could not travel both.

” Hence, the fork in the woods happens to be an extended metaphor signifying the human onus of making choices in one’s life. The road as described in the fourth and fifth lines that is, “And looked down one as far as I could/ To where it bent in the undergrowth” happens to be a metaphor for the uncertainty inherent in the realm of the future. It conveys the human incapacity to not be able peep beyond a limit in the future and the necessity to make decisions based on whatever little information that an individual has at one’s disposal (Timmerman, 2002).

Thereby the title The Road not Taken is indeed representative of the theme and the message inherent in the poem. As far as the identity of the narrator in the poem is concerned, it could safely be concluded that the narrator is the poet himself. If one attempts to cull out a profile of the narrator on the basis of the message inherent in the poem and the strategy resorted to by the narrator to convey this message, one comes out as being a mature and seasoned personality that has seen much life and has mellowed well in the light of the experiences one went through in one’s life.

The narrator comes our as evincing an attitude of conviction regarding the message inherent in the poem. The mood imbued in the poem appears to be somber and meditative. The intention of the poet seems to be to emphatically convey to the readers the message that life is all about making choices and it is the choices that an individual makes that eventually determine the course of one’s life and the experiences that one comes across in the future (Tuten & Zubizarreta, 2001). The intricacy and the detailed manner in which the poet happens to convey his dilemma as he comes across a fork in the woods really adds to the sense of seriousness and uncertainty being faced by the lonely traveler that is the poet.

The mood of the poem is further accentuated by the rhyme scheme selected by the poet. The poem comprises of four stanzas having five lines each. The rhyme scheme resorted to by the poet happens to be ABAAB. The fundamental rhythmic pattern in the poem The Road not Taken comes out as being meditatively strict and manly, which actually adds to the sobriety, maturity and gravity being evinced by the speaker in the poem. Each and every line in the poem comprises of four stressed syllables, which tend to vary on an iambic tetrameter base.

Thereby, The Road not Taken is a pithy and serious poem that tends to convey the human inevitability to make decisions while grappling with the uncertainty inherent in the future in a pensive and meditative mood and through the usage of figurative techniques. References Timmerman, J.H. (2002). Robert Frost. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press. Tuten, N.L, & Zubizarreta, J. (2001). The Robert Frost Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Wilcox, E.J., & Barron, J.N. (2000). Roads not Taken.

Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.