Poetry perceives the irrational mysteries and subtle truths, through rational
words. Although it is not true to assume that poetry always emanates its
messages from the arcane land of mysteries, but it is pretty safe to conjecture
that poetry is one of the means, most often utilized, to virtually ground the
invisible and get into the inscrutable. When I started prepping up for this
assignment, I read several poems by different poets. But hardly anything talked
to my heart. At last, I recalled I had read “The Vanishing Red” by Robert L.
Frost years back in High School and had liked it quite a bit. To put it in a
nutshell, after spending long hours in the library reading Frost’s poems --
which was not an easy task, since Frost has been such a prolific poet -– I
decided to write about “The Road Not Taken.” Robert Lee Frost, The poet
whose poem I’ll shortly comment upon, was born on March 26, 1874, in San
Francisco, California. After his father’s death in 1885, he moved to New
England and settled in rural Lawrence, Massachusetts. Young Frost experimented
with poetry in his early years at High School. He did so, as well, in Dartmouth
College and Harvard University, which he attended for a brief time. Later, from
1885 to 1912 , as Harold Bloom, a literary critic and a professor of humanities
at the University of Yale writes, Frost took up poultry farming, teaching, and
writing poetry “often at night at the kitchen table” (13). Only after moving
to England in 1912, Frost kicked off his literary career after publishing “A
Boy’s Will,” who got a positive review by Ezra pound, the influential
modernist writer of the time (Potter 16). In 1916, Frost publishes his new book
“Mountain Interval,” a set of poems starting with “The Road Not Taken.”
Bloom writes in his book that the title “Mountain Interval” suggests the
poems denote, “ pauses in rural landscape to contemplate the isolation,
between settlements, activities and memories, as well as between the self and
the natural world ” (30). Therefore, before reading the poem one can expect
subtle images and connections between the self and the nature. Now that we have
a rudimentary knowledge of the background, and the purveying general mood at the
time and the place this particular poem was written, we’ll try to give an
objective, personal assessment of the poem. We start here with the title of the
poem: The Road Not Taken First, a cursory look at the title tells us that
whatever we’re about to read is given to us in retrospect, because of the verb
tense “taken.” Second, we can safely deduce that “Not” involves a choice
that the poet has made. Third, the word “Road” indicates that there has been
some kind of a journey involved. So we proceed with our reading: 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; Here Frost –the speaker in the poem -- introduces his primary
metaphor the “two roads.” He tells us he is at a point in life, where he has
to make a decision between the “two roads.” The time is not very propitious
of course, for we know that the speaker is in the “yellow woods.” Yellow,
taken as a figurative language underlines sallow, acerbic lemon-like state. The
speaker’s regret at his human limitations is quite conspicuous, which reflects
in line that reads “… sorry I could not travel both [roads] and be one
traveler.” Yet, the choice is not easy, since we know that “long [he]
stood” before coming to a decision and examined the path “as far as [he]
could.” The feeling we get here is that the speaker is a mature type, who, to
the best of his ability thinks through and examines stuff thoroughly, before
making any critical move. However, despite his human intellect and prudent
character, the speaker is not able to discern the whole caliber of the journey
ahead, because he can’t see farther than where “[the road] it bent in the
undergrowth.” James L. Potter, a Ph.D from ahrvard who teaches at the Trinity
College contends that in a way the dearth of information is directly
proportional to the speaker’s environment. The message here is that we are
strongly affected by the company we keep or better the environment we’re in
(Potter 82). So we carry on with our reading: 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,
It seems remarkably interesting the Speaker’s word choice “other [road]’
rather than using something like the first road or/and the second road. Indeed,
when referring to the “other [road]” the speaker unequivocally tells us that
it was “as just and fair.” Can we say that the speaker is being ambivalent,
or, rather, no matter which road he’d choose, he’d always be thinking about
“the other” one? The speaker also seems to be little undecided. In fact,
“having perhaps the better claim” leaves the reader hung in the air. Was he
wary of the determining factors behind his choice? And if he was, why did he use
‘perhaps” instead of saying it DID have the better claim. Anyhow, the
speaker seems to convey the idea that his choice was based more on energy, youth
and glamour, for he writes “it was grassy and wanted to wear.” Bloom casts a
little light by asserting that the notion that a road is less traveled than
another is a fiction, a story the speaker “shall be telling” us for “ages
and ages hence” (33). I personally think the idea of a “fiction” is
ingenious, but little short of my capability to perceive, without outside help.
So we proceed: 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: After ponderous thinking, the speaker makes a
decision and tries to persuade himself that he will eventually satisfy his
desire to “travel both paths.” However, he simultaneously admits that such
hope is unrealistic. It seems like the speaker is aware of the fact that life is
very short. The underpinning message is that once we get to a turning point in
our life and make that pivotal decision; then, we can hardly “turn back,”
and this should be repeated to us “for ages and ages to come,” in order to
make sure that we understand. The speaker than, goes on to gracefully conclude
his poem: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. The tone clearly shifts in this stanza,
for it begins with a new sentence indicating a stronger break from the previous
ideas. Moreover, the poet makes use of repetition to lambaste the reader with
the main theme again. Second we notice in this stanza the disappearance of the
word “yellow” before the “wood.” It seems like, now the speaker has
arrived at the conclusion of his journey and is at peace with himself.
Consequently, he feels not compelled to remind us the wood’s initial
“yellow” appearance, where everything seemed hard and convoluted. It’s
ironic that what he suggests here clearly contradict what he had previously
claimed. Indeed, the notion that the two roads were “as just and fair” and
that “the passing there had worn them the same” two clear-cut notions of
parity, the verisimilitude of the two roads is interestingly changed into one
road being “less traveled by.” I guess, the speaker astutely points out, or
we can say he follows the example of those of us, who looking back in
perspective see our own, subjective vision of reality as opposed to the
objective assessment of reality. To conclude here, I would say poetry has a
powerful ability to penetrate into our innermost self. It has the power to
suggest and imply by reaching out towards a vision and probing down into
emotion. Similarly, I not only chose to write about this poem because I knew
about the great American de facto poet laureate (potter 3), but because I can
relate to Frost’s main theme, that of “diverging roads.” His vision of
life is very consonant with my real life experience and everything in the poem
flows in confluence with what I think, with a slight nuance. In my case, after
ten years of involuntary exile from school for which I paid an exorbitant price,
I did manage to “go back” to the other road and recuperate the squandered
time. BibliographyBloom, Harold. Bloom’s Major Poets: Robert Frost. New York: Chelsea House
Publishers, 1999. Potter, James L. Robert Frost Handbook. New Jersey: U of
Pennsylvania P, 1975.