Poetic Ambiguity and Universal Adaptation of “The Road Not Taken”

“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is a single of the most anthologized, extensively-read, beloved, and analyzed poems in the American canon. A brief poem consisting of four stanzas of five lines each and every composed of easy direct language constructed overwhelming from words of two syllables or much less, the poem clearly has not achieved its higher status as a result of experimentation with components of the type like rhyme scheme, meter or even the use of unusually figurative imagery. In truth, “The Road Not Taken” sets itself apart from most other poems held in equitable academic esteem precisely since a reader require not be a graduate college student—or even a high school graduate—in order to realize any of the individual words or arrive at a arguable interpretation of which means.

The simplicity of “The Road Not Taken” is what allows the ultimately ambiguous ending to transform the poem into one particular with such a universally recognized meaning that it is equally appropriate for hanging on a kitchen wall of a farm in Iowa and for becoming analyzed by English majors all through the libraries of the world’s most esteemed colleges. Frost endows every single stanza with its personal individual consideration of the titular idea of selections one particular tends to make in life and how every selection 1 makes also permits for the possible of at least one option selection that was not make. The first stanza is not just about coming to a fork in the road of life, it is also fairly specifically about how the alternatives we make should so usually be produced with the undergrowth of the unknown blocking our access to fully seeing the future consequences.

The second stanza provides a hint of the ambiguity to come at the poem’s close and constantly appears to be the 1 which has led so many readers to misinterpret the poem beneath its misapprehended title “The Road Less Traveled.” Frost purposely aims to convince the reader that the speaker is complete of the spirit of Yankee individualism and non-conformity by appearing prepared to make the swift choice to go down the road significantly less traveled. By stanza’s end, however, not only does he seem to have retracted from that rebellious impulse, but now appears even to be wavering over which of trail truly is the a single significantly less traveled

The third stanza would seem to confirm that the common interpretation of the poem as if it truly have been about “The Road Much less Traveled” is really simplistic, certainly. Within a span of moments Frost gives us an eternity of possibilities that have tiny if anything to do with the vaunted reading of the poem as a tour de force of non-conformist thought. What may initially seem to be a decision totally grounded in rebellious nose-thumbing at joining the crowd quickly becomes an abject lesson in rationalization: he can always come back and attempt out that other path later on, which is far more characteristic of somebody hedging their bets than the mark of a rugged individualist. But then, just when such a dismissal of the speaker’s commitment appears completely grounded, such rationalization for deciding on one particular path more than the other is jettisoned on the fast realization and even swifter acceptance that such an opportunity to try taking paths down two divergent roads is so uncommon as to be non-existent.

The final five lines reflect straight back upon the imagery of the 1st stanza in which the undergrowth acts as metaphor for the obstructed vision of the future that lies inside each option we made. The poem concludes with the speaker comfortably situated within that cloudy future, not exactly positive the road he chose requires him, but emotionally aware that the choice he made will have been consequential adequate to describe it to others in the future. What has been a poetic description of an unusually vacillating type of rebellious non-conformity marches inexorably toward its concluding ambiguity on the wings of a sigh.

The sigh with which this 1st-person exploration of decision, anxiousness, doubt, rebellion, regret and acceptance is told to other people at some point in the future is a single of the clearest examples of how the simplicity of poem’s language is deceptive. This function also becomes a single of the strongest elements in creating the poem’s ambiguous which means each ripe for unsophisticated misunderstanding and fodder for millions of pages of scrutiny. The initial reaction to hearing a story that commences or concludes with a sigh is that it will be tinged with regret. When positioned in reference to the consistently conflicted nature of the speaker as well as the overriding thematic top quality of ambiguity of which means, such a facile response to the imagery of the speaker sighing as he recounts the story of the road he chose to take more than the road he chose not to take seems entirely in suitable.

The final assertion that getting selected to take the road much less traveled has created all the distinction in the world is a powerhouse example not just of poetic ambiguity, but also how there is no assure that rebellion leads to feast or famine any much more than there is a assure of feast or famine by picking to follow the crowd and reject attempts at carving out the proper path via searching for individuality. Indeed, it can be efficiently argued that the definitive reason for why such an unnervingly open-ended meaning could lend a poem such universal adulation is that no path one chooses can truly be defined as either right or incorrect, since there is completely no way of knowing regardless of whether it is the location that has resulted in a path being effectively traveled or not.