Robert Frost Tricky

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Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" has been one of the most analyzed, quoted, anthologized poems in American poetry. A wide-spread interpretation claims that the speaker in the poem is promoting individualism and non-conformity, but a closer look shows that is not the case . A Tricky Poem Frost claims that he wrote this poem about his friend Edward Thomas, with whom he had walked many times in the woods near London. Frost has said that while walking they would come to different paths and after choosing one, Thomas would always fret wondering what they might have missed by not taking the other path. About the poem, Frost asserted, "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem - very tricky." And he is, of course, correct. The poem has been and continues to be used as an inspirational poem, one that to the undiscerning eye seems to be encouraging self-reliance, not following where others have led. But a…show more content…
It is a truism that any choice an individual makes is going to make all the difference in how one's future turns out. Commentary Human fallibility makes it likely that while looking back, folks will likely put a positive spin on their thoughts, behavior, and intentions. And Frost's speaker does exactly that by stating that he will say he took the road "less traveled by" when he knows that they were nearly identically traveled. Taking a less traveled road, of course, makes one sound adventurous and individualistic, even if that is not exactly the case with this speaker. The phrase "all the difference" also invokes a positive because that phrase is usually used in a positive sense; for example, one might say, "Add some cilantro to your guacamole, it will make all the difference in the world." But in a poem, one cannot rely on the popular sense of a phrase when other factors dictate
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