The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. And sorry I could not travel both. And be

one traveler, long I stood. And looked down one as far as I could. To where it bends in the

under growth,"(Frost, 2010, Ch.2.2)., "The Road Not Taken," an excerpt written by Robert

Frost. There are many items in this passage that contain symbolism. Symbolism of the journey

the author uses symbols to explain a story or poem so that the reader can find the underlying

meaning. In addition to Robert Frost's poem symbolism of the journey can be found in another

piece of literary work read throughout this course. This also can be found in other well-known

literature by Eudora Welty, "A Worn Path." Both writings display similar themes, different

points of view, showing how life can change with each journey, and both literatures have the

journey in common.

"Robert Frost was considered one of the most popular and beloved American poets of the

20th Century. The careful local observations and homely details of his poems often have deep

symbolic, even metaphysical, significance. His poems are concerned with human tragedies and

trepidation, (Frost, 2008). The poem, "The Road Not Taken" is no different from what the

Columbia Encyclopedia describes about his work. The first words of the poem discuss two roads

that separate in a yellow wooded setting. Yellow symbolizes more than just a color in this use.

The color yellow symbolizes decay or aging, (Clugston, 2010, Ch.7.2). This has a significant

symbolism to the poem. He portrays aging well associating with the color (yellow).

Robert Frost tells this poem in a first person point of view. "First person point of view is

when the speaker or narrator who tells about things he or she has seen, done, heard, thought, and

also learned about in other ways," (Roberts, Jacobs, 2007, P.1). He tells the story as if he is

looking back on his life, recalling the past events that led him to where he is in his current life.

He uses the picture of the fork in the road to describe two different journeys that he could take:

however, when he states, "then took the other, as just as fair...had worn them really about the

same,"(Frost, 2010). He is stating that neither path is better than the other but really that they are

about the same. Nevertheless, with the