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Essay / Analysis of the Path Not Taken - 778
Life Decisions and RoadsThroughout life, we are forced to make decisions that can and will greatly impact and significantly change our lives. Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken explains how one choice can make all the difference. The speaker of this poem knows that there is a very important decision to make and knows that he has no possible way of knowing whether or not his decision will benefit him until the future. Frost uses symbols such as roads and nature to show the reader how in life we all have to make decisions that are difficult but must be made. The poem written by Robert Frost is about someone who is walking in the woods and suddenly comes across a fork. on the road. The speaker stops for a moment and regrets that he cannot take both paths. He examines both paths carefully and notices that one is more worn than the other, but they are roughly the same. He decides to take the one that is less worn and save the other for another day. He realizes that we may never get the chance to come back and take this route. He instead says he will talk about his life-changing decision in the future with a sigh. The setting takes place in the first stanza. The speaker finds himself in a “yellow wood” (1) and encounters “two diverging roads” (1). Since the antlers are yellow, we can infer that it is most likely fall and the leaves are changing color. The season of fall can be seen as a symbol for someone who is in the fall of their life, as they are beginning to age. Later in the stanza, in lines 2 and 3, we see that the speaker really wishes he could take both paths. Frost writes “and sorry I couldn’t travel both” (2). This shows that the speaker is in the middle of the paper...this poem is about to end. Additionally, the hyphen after “and I” means that the speaker is hesitant to say what follows, which means that what he is about to say is very important. The last two lines say: “I took the one less crowded, and it made all the difference.” » (19-20). These two lines leave the reader with a sort of empty feeling. We don't know whether or not the speaker is happy with his decision. All we know is that the decision he made changed his life. The poem The Road not Taken by poet Robert Frost tells the story of someone who makes an important, life-changing decision, whether it's good or bad. the wrong way, we'll never know. Frost uses nature to his advantage by making it seem like the speaker of this poem is only talking about a fork in the road, when in reality he is about to make a very big decision in his life..