He still thinks about what could have happened if he had taken the other road. While the narrator made his choice independently without any external force, he still regrets it. The poem isn’t about individuality or uniqueness, it’s about accepting the fact that regret will always be there. This is the consolation he has created to calm his mind and let him make a choice. But in order to keep going, he must make a choice. He doubts he will get a chance again to make the same decision, as it is with life. The narrator makes his choice by telling his mind that he will take this road and explore the opportunities later. So what must he do to keep moving? That is where the next line saying “I kept the first for another day” comes. He tries to assume one path is better, different than the other, but soon realizes that it isn’t. So he started giving attributes to each, to make his mind decide one road so that he can move ahead. The roads were similar, both were “less traveled.” But inside the mind of the narrator, this similarity was causing him to stop. This shows an important part of the reality of the roads (and the choices) as well as the thinking of the narrator. In the very next line, the narrator says this The second road is described as “just as fair” though it was “grassy and wanted wear.” So one might think that the other road was less traveled, right? Not exactly. The roads are very similar to each other, which is the reason for the dilemma. That is the truth about life and its decisions. He says “I shall be telling you with a sigh.” This means that he isn’t calling his decision good or bad, it just means that no matter what choice he took, regret was inevitable. It is popularly thought that the narrator of The Road Not Taken chooses the less traveled road and hence it made all the difference, the fact is, there was no road that was “less traveled.” While Frost says that he took the road less traveled and that has made all the difference, pay attention to what precedes before that. Some poems by Robert Frost that you cannot miss.Fire and Ice symbolism: The meaning of love and hatred.But in the end, he has to walk on one road. “And looked down as far as I could” shows that the narrator is trying to weigh all the possible consequences of taking the paths. And looked down one as far as I could” Frost conveys the effect of a choice and the condition of indecisiveness. In the line “And be one traveler, long I stood. The roads diverged, giving the traveler two choices. They aren’t green, they aren’t brown and on the ground, but in the middle. First, the woods are described as “yellow.” We know that the leaves have a yellow hue when they reach the middle of their lifespan. There are a lot of metaphors that are used in the poem that indicates being in between two decision. So it is necessary to make up your mind, create some sort of consolation for it, and then make the decision. Aiming for both choices will stop your movement altogether. The efforts one needs to put to keep moving. He doubted the possibility of ever coming back to make the decision again, but he had to console his restless mind so that he could move on. An example of this can be seen in the line “ Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. He tries to console himself by making up false promises to himself. The narrator tries to find which one would be better for him. And this choice has rendered him motionless. The narrator of the poem is facing a difficult choice. What Robert Frost is trying to convey in his poem is the paralyzing effects similar choices can have on us. The idea of going on to one path was made up by him! We’ll explain it all. But in reality, he never said that the outcome was right or wrong. It is thought that Frost wants to convey that by taking the road that was less traveled, he made the right decision. The Misinterpretation of the poem: This poem is often considered as an ode to trailblazing, a symbol of going against the wave. The poem was meant to be a light-hearted one, but now it’s taken seriously. It is the classic choice vs determination situation. The overall meaning of the poems, if brought down to simple words, is the choices that one encounters in life, and their consequences. The Road Not Taken, as the title suggests is the remembrance and regret of not taking the other choice. The Meaning of The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |