However, the line “… And that has made all the difference” is not clear. It can lead to a great discovery, success, prosperity, or happiness. A small courageous step makes a big difference. Here “sigh” should not be taken as regret. The phrase “some were ages and age hence” refers to a distant future. The chief theme of his poetry is an ambiguous relationship with nature. The poem inspires us to face the challenging realities in life. The poem makes us think about choice we must make in life.Īll of us reach a crucial point in life when we must make the right choice. We should always have the courage to choose the right way even if it is rough and thorny. Here conflict is between the right choice and wrong choice. The striking feature of Frosts’ poems is the presentation of conflicts. It seems to be a characteristic of Robert Frost to express doubt while making revolutionary decisions. Maybe you look back and think, “I wonder what if I’d taken that other road…” but usually, we look back, forget the challenge of that decision and how appealing that other choice was, and sigh and say, “I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.He says that perhaps he may use the more conventional path sometime in future, but it is not possible to start the journey afresh. It’s always fascinating to look back on your life and wonder what other roads you might’ve taken (need or want some help taking stock and figuring out the road ahead? Hire me to coach you!) Haven’t we all had those moments where the “road diverged” and both roads ahead are equally fascinating and equally cool? But you take one or the other and your life happens after that. One day, I’ll say that it was this choice, in this moment, to take this particular road that made my life better, but in fact, both roads weren’t very different from one another, so my life might’ve been different if I’d taken the other road, but probably would’ve yielded other cool stuff.”
This poem is so much more complex than just “Hey, I took a road that most people don’t take, and that has made my life better and that’s why I got all the amazing results I got in my life.” The message is far more like, “I took a road. But appropriating portions of someone’s work while ascribing your own meaning to it is wrong, especially when a) that someone is a brilliant, complex poet like Robert Frost, and b) the meaning you ascribe is totally wrong. Look, poetry is subjective, to some degree. We know that from the first and second stanzas. The roads were the same. In fact, that road that I took, it wasn’t any less traveled by than the first. “I shall be telling this with a sigh, Somewhere ages and ages hence” means someday, down the road, when I’m old and telling stories about my past, I’ll sigh and say that I took the road less traveled by and that’s what “made all the difference” in how my life turned out.īut we, the readers, know that it wasn’t taking that road that made the difference. We tell stories and revise our memories as if decisions were made differently than they really were. It talks about how we rewrite our own histories. This is the most telling stanza of the poem. Stanza 4:Īnd that has made all the difference. It’s complex, this thought, because I want to pretend and kind of lie to myself (in the way that we do) that I’m not really giving up an opportunity, but rather just saving it for another time, even though I really know that time may never come. And “Oh, I kept the first for another day,” means that I, the traveler, decided to leave the other path to take another day- but it’s a little sarcastic, that line, because “I doubted if I should ever come back.” So even though I’ll probably never be back this way, I’ll pretend to myself that I’ll take that other path another day. See? They both “equally lay” with very few leaves that had been “trodden black.” That means that neither road was very well-traveled, really. “Though as for that the passing there, Had worn them really about the same,” tells the reader that the two roads are really just about the same. They’ve both been traveled equally. And this one is “grassy and wanted wear,” so at first the reader thinks it’s maybe been traveled less than the other one, right? But no. “Took the other, as just as fair” means that this road that I took is just as nice as the other one. Had worn them really about the same, What It Means: I look as far as I can down one of the roads, but I can’t see past a certain point, so I really don’t know what lies ahead. So here I am, a lone traveler, standing at a crossroads. To where it bent in the undergrowth What It Means: The Breakdown Stanza 1: I encounter two roads
0 kommentar(er)
