What type of poetry is the road not taken

In , feeling frustrated by his job prospects and a lack of traction in his poetry career, Frost moved his family to a farm left to him by his grandfather in Derry, New Hampshire. Frost would live there for nine years, and many of his most famous early poems were written before his morning chores while tending to the farm.

Consequently, Frost decided to sell the farm in and moved his family to London. Finally, after years of struggle, Frost became a famous poet essentially overnight. He received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and became the public face of 20th century American poetry. Late in life, at 86 years old, Robert Frost also became the first inaugural poet at John F.

Throughout his career, Frost never strayed far from old-fashioned, pastoral poetry, despite the fact that newer American poets moved in a more experimental direction. Frost and Thomas were fond of hiking together, and Thomas often had trouble making up his mind which trail they should follow.

Frost first read it to some college students who, to his surprise, thought it a very serious poem. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;. Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,.

And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Frost's most famous poem got its start as part of a letter sent to his best friend on the eve of World War I.

Frost and Thomas were great friends while Frost lived in England, both of them were well-read and very interested in nature. They frequently took long walks together , observing nature in the English countryside. He returned to the United States to avoid the war and fully expected Thomas to follow him. Thomas did not. Thomas, regretting his lack of achievement compared to his good friend Frost and feeling that the poem mocked his indecisiveness, decided to take initiative and fight for his country.

Unfortunately, Thomas was killed at the Battle of Arras on April 9, The poem has been republished thousands upon thousands of times and has inspired everything from self-help books to car commercials. But before we do, go back and reread the poem. Once you have that done, come back here Each decision we make sets us upon a path that we may not understand the importance of until much, much later. This theme is reflected throughout the poem.

But this is true for smaller, day-to-day decisions as well. Choosing who you spend time with, how hard you study, and what hobbies your pursue are examples of smaller choices that also shape your future, too. The speaker of the poem understands that. They stand at the crossroads of these two paths for a long time, contemplating their choice.

First, they stare down one path as far as he or she can, to where it trails off into the undergrowth. We see that in this stanza:. Just like in life, each path leads to another path, and then another.

This brings us to our first theme: how hindsight gives our choices power. However, the poem also suggests that while the choices we make are important, how we interpret these choices is what really makes us who we are.

There are four stressed syllables per line, varying on an iambic tetrameter base. This has got to be among the best-known, most-often-misunderstood poems on the planet. Several generations of careless readers have turned it into a piece of Hallmark happy-graduation-son, seize-the-future puffery. But you yourself can resurrect it from zombie-hood by reading it—not with imagination, even, but simply with accuracy.

These are the facts; we cannot justifiably ignore the reverberations they send through the easy aphorisms of the last two stanzas. One of the attractions of the poem is its archetypal dilemma, one that we instantly recognize because each of us encounters it innumerable times, both literally and figuratively.

Paths in the woods and forks in roads are ancient and deep-seated metaphors for the lifeline, its crises and decisions. Identical forks, in particular, symbolize for us the nexus of free will and fate: We are free to choose, but we do not really know beforehand what we are choosing between.

Our route is, thus, determined by an accretion of choice and chance, and it is impossible to separate the two. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. Detailed explanations, analysis, and citation info for every important quote on LitCharts.

The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of every Shakespeare play. Sign Up. Already have an account? Sign in. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. Literature Poetry Lit Terms Shakescleare.

Download this LitChart! Question about this poem? Ask us. Cite This Page. Lines It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed.