Robert Frost Poetry - Essay Example

"The Road Not Taken" portrays the crisis of choice through a first-person narrator who describes his past experience and its personal implications. The poem constitutes a portrait of human anxiety depicting man brooding uncomfortably over decisions made, directions taken, and chances missed. Conveying the poem's theme, Robert Frost uses variety of literature elements, and antithesis evidently one of the central ones. Contrasting the characteristics of two roads allows Frost to demonstrate the diversity of choices available for every individual while the consequences of these choices being equally "as just as fair" (Frost, 1972, p 131).

In further antithesis, Frost contrasts one road as "grassy and wanted wear" to alternative one, "wornreally about the same" (Frost, 1972, p 131). Abruptly, distinguishing between each road, narrator asserts their similarity, revealing that "both that morning equally lay/In leaves" (Frost, 1972, p 131). . Robert Frost effectively uses epithets to emphasize the indecisiveness of narrator, who found himself on the the diverging roads - "just as fair," "perhaps the better claim," "really about the same," all stress the complexity of narrator's position.

Metaphor of road "less traveled by" evidently refers to unconventional life choices made by the narrator, which "made all the difference" (Frost, 1972, p 131).In his "Education by Poetry," Frost once indicated that "poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another [poets] like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections - whether from diffidence or some other instinct" (Frost, 1972, p.332). Various literature elements like metaphors, epithets, and antithesis empower Frost in his aesthetic attempt to obscure the initial meaning of the poem.

REFERENCESFrost, R. 1972. The Rod Not Taken, In Lathem E. and Thompson L., Robert Frost Poetry andProse, pp.329-340Frost, R. 1972. Education by Poetry, In Lathem E. and Thompson L., Robert Frost Poetry andProse,