paper no. 108

Assignment : Paper no :108

The American Literature. 

∆ Personal Information: 

Name : Maya Batiya

Roll no : 18

Enrollment no :5108230003

Course : M.A.sem-2

Paper no :108

Paper code :22401

Paper name : The American Literature. 

Topic : Critical Analysis “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. 

Submitted : Smt.S.B.Gardi, Department of English MKBU.

Email:mayajbatiya2003@gmail.com 

Q. Critical Analysis “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.

∆ Introduction : 

The poem “The Road Not Taken” is about the choices one has to make in life. It was written by a great American poet ‘Robert Frost’. It was first published in August 1915 in “The Atlantic” and later published as the first poem in the collection “Mountain Interval” of 1916.

Robert Frost wrote this poem to highlight a trait and poke fun at his friend ‘Edward Thomas’ an English Welsh poet, who when out walking with Frost in England would often regret not having taken a different path. One day walking in a forest, the poet also arrived at a place where the road diverged into two. So he had to decide which road he should take. The poet was in a dilemma now. However, he decided to take the second path and thought of travelling the first some other day in the future.

∆ About Robert Frost :

Robert Frost (born March 26, 1874, San Francisco, California, U.S.—died January 29, 1963, Boston, Massachusetts) was an American poet who was much admired for his depictions of the rural life of New England, his command of American colloquial speech, and his realistic verse portraying ordinary people in everyday situations.

Robert Frost was an American poet. He is known for his verses about everyday life in the countryside of New England.

Frost became interested in poetry in high school. After graduating in 1892 he briefly attended Dartmouth College. He wanted to be a poet, though, so he soon left school. He worked at various jobs, including teaching and farming, while trying to get his poems published. He also married and started a family.

In 1912 Frost moved his family to England. There he met other poets. He learned from them and was able to publish two collections of his poetry. Many people praised his books. By the time he returned to the United States in 1915 he was well known.

∆ Title :

It seems that the notion of regret is seen, in the title ‘The Road Not Taken’ rather than The Road Taken. Although the speaker has made his choice, he can’t stop thinking about the road he left behind. Thus, we can infer that Frost calls the poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ because he is thinking about the choice he didn’t make.

∆ Analysis of “The Road Not Taken” :

“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;”

The poem starts with the poet, who is walking down a road, and then there is a diversion, there are two different paths and he has to choose one out of there. Two yellow wood means a forest with leaves that are wearing out and have turned yellow in colour – the season of autumn. The poet kept standing there and looked at the path very carefully as far as he could see it. Before taking the path, he wanted to know how it was. Was it suitable for him or not?

It also happens in our lives when we have choices and alternatives, but we have to choose only one out of them. We take time to think about the pros and cons, whether it is suitable for us or not, and only then, do we take a decision on what path we should choose.

“Then took the other, as just as fair,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear,

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,”

      In the second stanza, the poet says he kept on looking at one path for a long time to check if it was the right path for him or not, and then he decided and start walking on another path because he felt that both paths were equally good. He felt maybe this path was better for him so he choose it as it had grass on it which meant that it was unused. Not many people had walked on this path earlier which is why this path was grassy.

After he walked on the path for some distance, he realized that both paths were similar and worn out. Even in our lives, we take any path or option but all of them have the same benefits, disadvantages, problems, and challenges, and we must face them. We think that we are choosing a better option but it is not that way.

“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.”

    In the third stanza, the poet says that the paths were similar that morning. Both had leaves on them and no one had stepped on them as they were still green in colour. He decided that day he would take one path and keep the other for another day. Although he knew that he could not go back on the choice that he had made. Similarly, even in our life once we choose an option we must keep on moving ahead with that option and we never get a chance to come back and take the other option we had left earlier.

“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.”

In the last stanza, the poet talks about the future. He says that once upon a time, he had reached such a point in life that there were two options for him and he travelled on that road which had been travelled by a lesser number of people. That decision of his decided his future.

  ∆ "The Road Not Taken" Themes :

 1.)Choices and Uncertainty :

   In Road Not Taken," the speaker describes him or herself as facing a choice between which of two roads to take. The speaker's choice functions as an extended metaphor for all the choices that the speaker and all people must make in life. Through the speaker's experience, the poem explores the nature of choices, and what it means to be a person forced to choose (as all people inevitably are). The poem begins with the speaker recounting the experience of facing the choice of which road to take. The speaker's first emotion is "sorrow," as he or she regrets the reality that makes it impossible to "travel both" roads, or to experience both things. The poem makes clear that every choice involves the loss of opportunity and that choices are painful because they must be made with incomplete information. The speaker tries to gather as much information as possible by looking "down one [road] as far as I could," but there is a limit to what the speaker can see, as the road is "bent," meaning that it curves, leaving the rest of it out of sight. So the speaker, like anyone faced with a choice, must make a choice, but can't know enough to be sure which choice is the right one. The speaker, as a result, is paralyzed: "long I stood" contemplating which road to choose. The speaker does eventually choose a road based on which one appears to have been less traveled, but the poem shows that making that choice doesn't actually solve the speaker's problem. Immediately after choosing a road, the speaker admits that the two roads were "worn... really about the same" and that both roads "equally lay" without any leaves "trodden black" by passersby. So the speaker has tried to choose the road that seemed less traveled, but couldn't tell which road was actually less traveled. By making a choice, the speaker will now never get the chance to experience the other road and can never know which was less traveled. The speaker hides from this psychic pain by announcing that he or she is just saving "the first [road] for another day!" But, again, reality sets in: "I doubted if I should ever come back." Every choice may be a beginning, but it is also an ending, and having to choose cuts off knowledge of the alternate choice, such that the person choosing will never know if they made the "right" choice. The poem ends with the speaker imagining the far future, when he or she thinks back to this choice and believes that it made "all the difference." But the rest of the poem has shown that the speaker doesn't (and can never) know what it would have been like to travel down that other road and can't even know if the road taken. was indeed the one less traveled. And, further, the final line is a subtle reminder that the only thing one can know about the choices one makes in life is that they make "all the difference" but how, or from what, neither the poem nor life provide any answer.

2.) Individualism and Nonconformity :

In "The Road Not Taken," the speaker is faced with a choice between two roads and elects to travel by the one that appears to be slightly less worn.The diverging roads may be read as being an extended metaphor for two kinds of life choices in general: the conventional versus the unconventional. By choosing the less-traveled path over the well-traveled path, the speaker suggests that he or she values individualism over conformity. The speaker, when deciding which road to take, notes that the second is "just as fair" as the first, but that it has "perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear." In other words, the second road had the added benefit of being less well-worn than the first. Notably, this absence of signs of travel is phrased positively rather than negatively.Rather than stating outright that the road looked as if it had not had many travelers, thespeaker states that it was "grassy" (a consequence of low foot traffic) and that it "wanted. wear" (as if it were almost asking for the speaker to walk on it). The speaker presents nonconformity as a positive trait, and even implies that popularity can make things less appealing: the first road, because of its popularity, lacks the grass that makes the second path so enticing. Despite the speaker's preference for nonconformity, though, the poem ultimately remains ambiguous about whether choosing the road "less traveled" necessarily leads to a better or more interesting life. First, the poem questions whether it's actually even possible to identify what is non-conformist. After choosing the road that seems to have been less traveled, the speaker then comments that, in fact, the two roads had been "worn... really about the same." The speaker seems to sense that though he or she has attempted to take the road "less traveled," there's no actual way to know if it was less traveled.

3) Making Meaning :

In "The Road Not Taken," the speaker must choose between two roads without having complete information about how they differ. Even after having chosen the second road, the speaker is unable to evaluate his or her experience, hecause the speaker can't know how things would have been different if he or she had chosen the first road. In the final stanza, the speaker imagines him or herself in the distant future looking back on this choice. In this way, the poem engages not just with a choice being made, but with the way that the speaker interprets that choice and assigns it meaning after the fact. It is only when looking back, after all, that the speaker sees the choice of which road to take as having made "all the difference."

∆ "The Road Not Taken" Symbols :

1.Diverging Roads - 

The entirety of "The Road Not Taken" is an extended metaphor in which the two roads that diverge symbolize life's many choices. In much the same way that people are generally unable to see what the future holds, the speaker is unable to see what lies ahead on each path. Furthermore, what little the speaker thinks he or she understands about each path at the moment of decision later turns out to have been less clear cut, underscoring the impossibility of predicting where one's life choices will lead.

2.The Road Less Traveled - 

The entirety of "The Road Not Taken" is an extended metaphor in which the road "less traveled" symbolizes the path of nonconformity. The speaker, when

trying to choose which road to take, looks for the road that seems less worn. At the end of the poem, the speaker asserts that choosing the road less traveled "has made all the difference"- the suggestion being that he or she has led a life of nonconformity, and is happier because of it. However, the status of the road less traveled as a symbol of nonconformity is complicated somewhat by the fact that the poem makes it clear that the speaker has no way of actually knowing whether the road he or she chose was really the road less traveled: both roads, after all, are "worn...really about the same." This, in turn, raises questions about the speaker's

notions of individualism and nonconformity, suggesting that these ideals may not be as easily definable as the speaker of the poem thinks. In this way, the road less traveled is as much a symbol of nonconformity as it is a symbol of the difficulty of defining that ideal.

∆ Conclusion : 

Thus the poem “The Road Not Taken” is about the journey of our life. We never know where life will take us, preplanning what the end of the road looks like for ourselves, and building regret is silly. Life is about the paths we do choose to walk through, not about “The Road Not Taken.” The poem also gives a very strong message for all the students that every student should be wise and careful while making choices out of the options that they have in their life because their future depends on the choices that they make today.

Thank you… ☺🍂🍁

Words :2435

Images :7

∆ References : 

1) Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (2024a, March 22). Robert Frost. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Frost  

2) The road not taken summary & analysis: The road not taken poem analysis. English Literature | English Literature Zone | Free Literature Notes. (2024, April 13). https://englishliteraturezone.com/the-road-not-taken-robert-frost /#google_vignette

3) Scribd. (n.d.-b). “The road not taken” themes choices and uncertainty - in “The road not taken,” the speaker describes him or herself as. Scribd. https://www.scribd.com/document/481883530/The-Road-Not-Taken-frost- docx