The road less traveled by Robert frost - Essay Example

However, if one proceeds beyond the literal meaning of The Road not Taken, at a figurative level, one could ascribe much deeper meanings to this simple looking poem. The ease with which the poet has resorted to an extended metaphor in this poem does catch the attention and admiration of readers across ages and generations. In a pragmatic context, the true meaning of the poem could only be fathomed only after analyzing the poem, stanza by stanza and line by line. In the first stanza, the poet presents himself as a traveler standing in the woods, meditating on a fork in the woods.

The fork in the woods has often being used in the Western literature and poetry to symbolize the choices that an individual is required to make in one’s life. The second line in the first stanza accentuates the theme of the poem by presenting an antithesis in the sense that when the traveler comes to the fork; he realizes that he could not pursue both the roads, thereby coming to the conclusion that every choice in life involves forgoing many other choices. Hence, in the next three lines, the traveler longingly looks at the forsaken road on the fork as “it bent in the undergrowth.

” In the second stanza the poet extends the metaphor set in the first stanza. The poet decides to take the other road, which to him seemed to be more appropriate in the sense that “it was grassy and wanted wear”. In a figurative sense this road presents the tough choices in life which only a chosen few decide to get along with. Yet, in the very next line the poet also acknowledges that the other road that he avoided was as worthy and deserving. This very stanza brings out the true appeal of the poem that relies for its attraction on the presentation of an archetypal dilemma, with which a reader instantaneously identifies with in the sense that everybody is required to make choices in life, both in a literal and figurative sense.

In the third stanza the poet again