|
The Road Not Taken
Introduction
The poet of the song "The Road Not Taken" uses metaphors, symbols and images in order to convey his frustration about his inability to choose both roads and experience them both, since he's standing at a crossroads and can only travel one.
The poem presents a traveler standing at a crossroad and finding it hard to decide which road to take. Making the decision is hard because neither road was actually preferable to him since there wasn't actually much difference between the two. Both seemed quite abandoned and were equally attractive to him.
He tries to see where one of the roads will take him, but his ability to predict the consequences of his choice is limited because he loses sight of the road at some point in the undergrowth ("looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth"). He finally took the road which looked less used, less ordinary and therefore maybe more challenging. Although he leaves the first road he doesn't take as an alternative, he knows that people do not often change roads in life.
The last stanza of the song gives expression to a common feeling that no matter what kind of choice one makes, he will always have the suspicion in the back of his mind that the other road could also have been taken, that it could have been better. There is always the thought that one has missed something that he could have gained if only he had been able to experience the other way. The fact that he chose the road less traveled by has had a great significance in his life.
The meaning of the poem
This poem basically expresses regrets on the lost opportunities of life. Instead of talking about what he has gained and achieved by taking the road he had taken, he thinks about how life could have been different if he had chosen the other path. This is why the poem is called "The Road Not Taken"- the main focus and attention is on the road he has not taken, not on the one he has taken.
The poem can be seen as an expression of man's eternal struggle and search for the right way of life, especially when having more than one possibility and not knowing what to choose. The poem expresses the fact that we are limited in our choices, and that is why we always sigh when we speak about the option we gave up.
In order to emphasize and point out better what the song is about, the poet uses three main poetic elements: metaphors, symbolism and imagery.
The metaphor is actually that the paths in the woods and forks in roads are ancient and deep-seated metaphors for a man's lifetime, its crises and decisions.
|