The Road Not Taken

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According to Robert Frost in his poem, “The Road Not Taken “symbolism has been largely used to its simplistic manner in explain how the speaker in the poem is burdened with the decision of which paths to follow between the diverging ones in the wood and how this coupled with the real life situations of choosing different directions that requires one to make a choice on which to follow. The poem is written in the first person as shown in the last stanza, fourth line, “I took the one less travelled by, “The two ways indicated in this poem all seem equally the same, overlaid with un-trodden and worn out leaves(Frost, 1). The speaker is confused by these ways and resolves to choose one, convincing himself that he will take the other another day.…show more content…
The poem revolves around the main theme of making choices in our day to day activities. The Speaker does not know the destination of the two roads which makes it harder on him which to follow between the two roads. One road looks like it’s frequently used by others as it is trodden, while the other road is less trodden which the speaker chooses to follow. At some point he gets confused on the decision he makes, since he sees one way being better than the other and that the two roads could be the same. However he sticks to his decision of following the less travelled road and asserts that he will preserve the other road for another day even if it knocks in his head that he will never have the same opportunity of taking the other road (Frost,…show more content…
These linguistic elements range from word choice, sound, imagery, tone, syntax, metaphor etc. Word choice has been used in the case of “long I stood “line 3, in stanza one to show that the speaker is confused in making a decision on the right path to follow. Syntax on the other hand has been employed by the repetition of ‘and’ in the beginning of first three lines in stanza one to show how the speaker is occupied with a lot of thoughts. The whole poem is anchored in metaphor as in the case of Road ,which is used across the poem which depicts life paths that we must choose as compared to different roads that one chooses especially when one is at the cross roads (Frost, 1). The use of Syntax helps to show the fear of regret by the speaker in the poem. Alliteration has been used in line 3,in stanza 2,”wanted wear” in which both words begin with letter w in order to make the poem appealing. Irony also has been used in the case where the speaker is confused in choosing which road to follow between the two and he chooses the less-travelled and goes ahead to say, “that has made all the difference.”The Irony in this case supports the speaker’s decision in communicating out the theme of

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