Robert Frost

"The Meaning of "The Road Not Taken"

In the poem "The Road Not Taken" author Robert Frost uses the simple image of a road to represent a person's journey through life. A well-established poet, Frost does an excellent job of transforming a seemingly common road to one of great importance, which along the way helps one identify who they really are. This poem is one of self-discovery. Frost incorporates strong elements of poetry such as the speaker, the audience, tone, diction, imagery as well as figurative language to help create one of his most well known pieces about the human experience. The main theme of the poem that Frost attempts to convey is how important the decisions that one makes can be, and how it can affect one's future.

The Road Not Taken is told as a first-person narrative. The narrator tells us the he is faced with "two roads diverged in a yellow wood" (l. 1) and must choose between the two. He says that he would like to "travel both and be one traveler" (l. 2-3) as he would like to see what each has to offer, but he knows that he will only be able to travel one. He is undecided and says "long I stood" (l. 3) suggesting that he needed a lot of time to make his decision. It appears the narrator is thinking rather than speaking and the use of basic language conveys this. The fact that the narrator is thinking allows the reader to become not only the audience, but also the narrator. In this poem the speaker's tone helps illustrate the struggle a person goes through in their life to pick the right road to travel, but as the poem unfolds, the speaker's tone changes. He justifies his choice "because it was grassy and wanted wear" (l. 8), but as the tone changes the speaker shall "sigh" when he thinks of how he will tell about his journey.

Imagery is used frequently in this poem. "The two roads were diverged in a yellow wood" (l. 1) and where they "bent in the undergrowth" (l. 5) gives us an idea of a forest or brush land, and this simple location makes it seem like the choice could be faced by anyone at anytime. Frost also conveys the meaning of this poem through his choice of diction. The words chosen by Frost usually have a much darker and deeper