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The Road Not Taken Analysis PDF
The Road Not Taken Analysis PDF
by Robert Frost
1. Metaphor: There are many metaphors in the poem like road, fork in the road and
yellowwoods. The road in the poem is the metaphor of life, while the fork on the road
metaphorically represents the choices we make to determine the course of our lives.
Similarly, yellow woods are the metaphor of making decisions during the hard times
of a person’s life. These metaphors used in this poem emphasize the importance of
different decisions we make in different situations and their impacts on our lives.
2. Imagery: Imagery is used to make the readers feel things through their five senses.
The poet has used images of the sense of sights such as leaves, yellowwoods
and These images help readers to actually perceive things they are reading. The
image of the road helps readers to visualize the road providing a navigation route to
the traveler.
3. Simile: A simile is a device used to compare things with familiar things to let the
readers know it easily. There is one simile used in the second stanza such as “as just
as fair”. It shows how the poet has linked the road less taken to the easy way through
life.
4. Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds such as the sound of /a/ and
/o/ in quick succession in “though as far that the passing” and in “Somewhere ages
and ages hence.”
5. Consonance: Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds such as /d/ in “two
roads diverging in a yellow wood” and /t/ sound in “though as far as the passing
there.”
6. Personification: Robert Frost has personified road in the third line of the second
stanza. Here, it is stated “Because it was grassy and wanted wear” as if the road is
human, and that it wants to wear and tear.
7. Parallelism: Parallelism is the use of a source of words, phrases or sentences that
have similar grammatical forms. Frost has used Parallelism in the poem such as;
Concluding the literary analysis, it can be argued that Robert Frost has beautifully used
various literary devices to make the poem display multiplicity of interpretation which has
gained the poem much deserved popularity.
Stanza: A stanza is a poetic form of a fixed number of lines. In this poem, there are
four stanzas with each stanza having five verses or lines.
Quintain: A quintain is a five-lined stanza borrowed from Medieval French Poetry.
Here, each stanza is a quintain such as the first one or the second one.
Rhyme Scheme: The whole poem follows ABAAB rhyme scheme. There are four
beats per line, employing iambic tetrameter. The rhymes in “The Road Not Taken”
are end rhymes which are also perfect rhymes.
Trochee: Trochee means there is a one stressed and one unstressed syllable in a line
such as “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.”
Anapests: Anapests means there are two short or unstressed syllables followed by one
long or stressed syllable. The above example is also an anapest.
This analysis shows that this poem, though, seems a simple and innocent composition, points
to the reality of making decisions in complex situations. The point to remember is that the
road has been emphasized in that it is the choice that makes the road important for us. In
other words, our preferences in life make us different from others.
“I shall be telling this with a sigh / somewhere ages and ages hence.”
2. These two lines could be used when delivering lectures or speeches about decision-making
choices in life such as: