Poem Review: “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost

 

Source: Redbubble

Title of the poem - The Road Not Taken.

Author’s Name: Robert Frost

Genre: Narrative

Language: English.

Robert Frost's poem Road Not Taken appeared in this book in the August 1915 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, and Frost used it as the opening poem of his mountain collection, Mountain Interval. This poem is written in a format called iambic tetramer, which uses the "aabbc" rhyme scheme in every four stanzas.

This sonnet portrays an author who is recalling his journey through the woods when he had to choose which of the two roads to travel. The work's importance has for quite some time been questioned by readers; Frost himself guaranteed that it was a spoof of the Georgian writer Edward Thomas.

Short Summary ( Spoiler Alert! )

The primary topic of "The Road Not Taken" is that life is loaded with decisions that will characterize our lives. The speaker spends some time pondering when he comes to a crossroads, which represents a decision he should make in his life.

At last, he needs to pursue some choice, but he will use whatever is left of his life to be tormented by, or essentially curious about, what might have occurred if he picked the other way. His decision "has had a significant effect" on his life. It's debatable whether this is for the better or the worse.

About the Poet

Robert Lee Frost, who was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, California, and died on January 29, 1963, was an American poet. Frost is known for his realistic depictions of British life and his command of American colloquial speech.

During his lifetime, he was frequently honored; Frost is the only poet and writer to receive "four Pulitzer Prizes" for Verse. He became one of America's most intriguing "public abstract figures, almost an imaginative foundation."He was granted the "congressional gold medal" in 1960 for his lovely works.

Robert Frost exclaimed, "The Road Not Taken" as a joke for his companion, Edward Thomas. At the point when they went strolling together, Thomas was persistently ambivalent about which street they should take, and everything they considered frequently lamented that they might have taken the other one.

Frost complained to Thomas not long after writing the poem in 1915 that he had read it to a group of college students and that it had been taken seriously, "despite my giving my all to make it clear by my way that I was tricking.... Concession." 

Nonetheless, Frost got a kick out of the chance to joke, "I'm never more serious than while kidding." As his joke unfurls, Robert Frost makes a variety of implications, never entirely permitting one to supersede the other—even as "The Road Not Taken" portrays how decisions are unavoidable.

  

Personal Review

The primary topic of the sonnet, "The Road Not Taken," is that people are confronted with and characterized by their decisions. The primary thought of the sonnet is that the speaker is faced with this crossroads and should pursue a decision about which street to take. The speaker can pick one way and should comply with that decision.

While we may wish to avoid these decisions, the speaker (and, by extension, the artist) informs us that we cannot avoid the horrifying component of decisions. There is essentially nothing that can be done to remove this burden from us; we stand at a crossroads and must choose. In the last analysis, the poem demonstrates to us that the principal subject of our decisions should likewise be that we are satisfied with them.

The last line of the poem shows this, about the speaker's understanding that his decisions "have had a significant effect." It appears to me that this reading at the end shows that regardless of what our decisions and our choices are, they are our own, and we should accept responsibility for the truth.

To me, the context of this poem seems to hold out the moral that life is a continuous journey full of divergence now and then. The important thing is to move on without looking back to determine whether the paths taken were right or wrong. We cannot get everything we want in life and have to make wise choices to live with what we have. 

Whatever direction our lives take is determined by the choices we make. So, make a wise choice and be firm about moving without being in a dilemmatic condition. Be confident in your choices and move forward.

Famous Quotations

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,"

And I apologize for not being able to travel both.

And as a traveler, I stood for a long time.

and looked down one as far as I could.

"To where it bent in the undergrowth...

 

"I shall be telling this with a sigh.

Somewhere, ages and ages hence, 

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I

I chose the less traveled path.

"And that has made all the difference."

 

Conclusion

Whatever it is, at some point in life it gives us lemons to make lemonade. We must make decisions wisely, and we should face them bravely. Additionally, we can say that the decisions we take must be independent without fearing their consequences, as that is what makes all the difference in our esteemed lives.

My rating for the poem- is 4.7 on 5

 

Written by Purnimaa Alagappan