The poem “The Road Not Taken” depicts personal philosophy and perception of life by the author. This poem is full of symbolism which helps Robert Frost to create unique messages and appeal to the emotions and imagination of readers. This paper finds and describes unique symbols running through Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” and tries to interpret their unique and sacred meaning. Frost uses different symbols to unfold the message and convey the authentic atmosphere of the poem.
The poem depicts nature and discusses how beautiful it is. Nature, and the theme of wood, in particular, is used as a symbol to describe the deep personal feelings and life experience of a human. The author gives only some hints to the reader to comprehend the meaning of the poem, and under “paths” he means our life with non-trodden paths, which we have to carve. In the poem, a glorious scene of nature grasps the readers’ imagination: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood”. Beauty is depicted and enhanced by the poet’s rendering of delicate expressions that come together to form a beautiful composition of nature at its best (Juten and Zubizarreta 81).
The main symbol of the poem is “wood”. It is possible to assume that the theme of “wood” means “great, century-old wisdom” of nature and a human being. “I thought that only someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks could so forget his handiwork on which He spent himself the labor of his axe”. “Wood” means the life experience of a particular person, and it brings a message to everyone to think over the next step in his life. In the poem, the theme of wood implies not only wisdom but also the whole life of a person, who has a right to choose which path to go. Nature is different as a human’s inner world does: winter is a piece of mind and autumn means mediation (Kennedy and Gioia 11).
In the poem, the path is a symbol of the future, and a person has a choice to choose his road. Roads in the poem are “non-trodden, so it means that a person has to pave the way in his life by life expectations and aims: “And both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day”. Nature serves as a symbol that represents dilemma and the knowledge retrieval, the desire to find old truth. Using unique symbols, Frost raises a dilemma of choice”…And looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth”. The theme of “path in the wood” was always one of the topical ones. Human life flows like a non-trodden small path, it is comparable with the rain or snow weather. The path represents the life cycle of nature in comparison to human life. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by” (Frost).
In sum, Frost uses different symbols of nature in several dimensions to unveil human life. The author shows that human being submitted to nature and has a connection with the earth. Romantic and lengthy descriptions of nature are intertwined with grating people’s sufferings. Frost tells that in our ordered and organized world one feels sometimes the need for a change.
Works Cited
Frost R. Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays (Library of America). Library of America, 1995.
Juten, L. Zubizarreta, J. The Robert Frost Encyclopedia. Greenwood Press, 2001.
Kennedy, X. J. Gioia, D. Backpack Literature an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Pearson Longman, 2006.