Analysis of the Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Analysis of the Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

By Rahmat Setiawan

092154030

English Language and Literature Dept. faculty of Language and arts

State University of Surabaya (Unesa)

Lidah Wetan Campus

Email: nubackz@aol.com

The road not taken is one of the poems of Robert Frost. The form of “The Road Not Taken” consists of four stanzas and each stanza has of five lines (called as quintet). It is included in a structured verse because it has structural rhyme ABAAB.

Stepping up to the sound of the rhythm, there are four feet per line and stressed syllable is in the last per feet, thus can be included in an iambic tetrameter. Like in the first line, | Two roads | diverged | in a yel | low wood | (bold letters mean stressed). The rhyme scheme is ABAAB. In the first stanza, wood (A), both (B), stood (A), could (A), and undergrowth (B). In the second stanza, fair (C), claim (D), wear (C), there (C), and same (D). In the third stanza, lay (E), black (F), day! (E), way (E), and back (F). In the last stanza, sigh (G), hence (H), I (G), by (G), and difference (H). There is an exception for the last (difference), it is usually stressed in the –ence (near rhyme between hence and difference). The rhyme can be made simpler through ABAAB=EFEEF=GHGGH. There also having End Rhyme like wood and stood, lay, day, and way. A near rhyme is being in hence and difference. The repetition is represented by Yet knowing how way leads on to way, and Somewhere ages and ages hence. The refrain is only once raised in Two roads diverged in a yellow wood (first line) and Two roads diverged in a wood (seventeenth line).

Talking about the sense, it actually has a certain sense. The dilemmatic, it is imaged by the two roads that has to be chosen. In the first stanza, the roads are “diverged” in a yellow road. It means that the two roads reflect to a choice (Metaphor) and a choice is purposed to “a yellow wood”. Yellow here means the future and the wood means the life. It must be chosen to keep walking toward but life is uncertain in the future (yellow is brightness, brightness makes everything unclear, the unclear things make nobody does not know about the future). That is why it needs to choose one of the roads of the life. Yellow here also has the imagery of autumn. One of the roads is ”undergrowth” and it may be exist from the leaves (autumn) which fall to the road.

Entering the second stanza, it is still talking about the road. Another road is quite similar with the one before but it is different (grassy). The similarity of the two roads (formed by the fallen leaves in autumn) dramatizes the dilemma. This choice of choosing the road will lead throughout this poem until the conclusion and it belongs to an Extended Metaphor.

Diving to the third stanza, here is a something new about “morning”. Going back to the word of “yellow” and it will have new imagery between autumn in the sunrise or the sunset. However, the next line “In leaves no step had trodden black” has imagery that it was being at sunset because the word of black is imagery of night. There is also a regretting after choosing a road (in this stanza, after choosing the road means the growing day or the next day in a life). The regret is about disability to go back. Remember that life or time will never be back.

 Thinking over in the last stanza, the traveler has been thinking, standing, and feeling dilemmatic for long time. It shows in the “Somewhere ages and ages hence”. The two roads is raised again (refrain) after this line, it is used to aimed the purpose of the traveler that the traveler is still not moving to choose. Finally, the traveler’s mind has changed every view of those roads that had been imagined or wondered before and actually keep standing to. Life is a choice, so that think it over before taking because there is no repeating in a life and only a regretting after taking wrong choice.