Robert Frost's Tricky Poem Analysis of The Road Not Taken
Labels: EducationRobert 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.
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 close reading of the poem proves otherwise. It does not moralize about choice, it simply says that choice is inevitable but you never know what your choice will mean until you have lived it...
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