ANALYSIS

Poem, Short Story, Essay

MSC 7 TF 11:30-1:00PM
PATRIA G. GAMIS
BSE-English
POEM

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN – Robert Frost

AUTHOR

Robert Frost holds a unique and almost isolated position in American letters. “Though his career
fully spans the modern period and though it is impossible to speak of him as anything other than
a modern poet,” writes James M. Cox, “it is difficult to place him in the main tradition of modern
poetry.” In a sense, Frost stands at the crossroads of 19th-century American poetry and
modernism, for in his verse may be found the culmination of many 19th-century tendencies and
traditions as well as parallels to the works of his 20th-century contemporaries. Taking his symbols
from the public domain, Frost developed, as many critics note, an original, modern idiom and a
sense of directness and economy that reflect the imagism of Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell. On
the other hand, as Leonard Unger and William Van O’Connor point out in Poems for Study,
“Frost’s poetry, unlike that of such contemporaries as Eliot, Stevens, and the later Yeats, shows
no marked departure from the poetic practices of the nineteenth century.” Although he avoids
traditional verse forms and only uses rhyme erratically, Frost is not an innovator and his technique
is never experimental. 



SUMMARY

The speaker in the poem in traveling and comes upon a cross roads or a fork-in-the-road. Here
he or she much decide which way to continue traveling. Unable to see what lies ahead, he
examines both roads from his current vantage and thinks he perceives one to be less worn by
passersby. He realizes that both roads are likely equally traveled and laments that he will probably
never return to take the other path. The speaker thinks of how he will tell this story in the future
with a sigh. He chooses the road he perceived to be less worn and says “that has made all the
difference.”

ANALYSIS

At heart, this poem is about choice: how one decision can change a person's entire life. The
speaker chose one path over another, and that, he says, "has made all the difference." The fork
in the road is symbolic of the choice the speaker has to make about his life. Each path
corresponds to a different direction his life may take, so he has to choose carefully. Structurally,
this poem consists of four stanzas of five lines following an ABAAB rhyme scheme.

REACTION

“The Road Not Taken,” a seemingly simple poem, has given rise to surprisingly complex debates
about its interpretation: though some believe Frost refers to a specific decision in his own life,
others believe he pokes fun at contemporary poet Edward Thomas’s famous indecisiveness.

The poem’s tone is also up for debate: some read it as a gently satiric commentary on the human
response to decision-making, while others interpret it as a lament about the cruelty of permanent
choices.
Some think the “road less traveled” leads to tragedy and regret, while others believe Frost
celebrates nonconformity and individuality.

The poem’s speaker contradicts himself, first believing the road to be less traveled but then
changing his mind, then deciding to return to the other path another day, only to confess he will
probably never come back to it.

Refrerences

https://www.shmoop.com/road-not-taken/summary.html

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-frost

https://www.enotes.com/topics/road-not-taken/themes

SHORT STORY

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER – Edgar Allan Poe

AUTHOR

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer in the first half of the 19th century famous for scaring
the heck out of his readers. He is the master of dismemberment, underground crypts, murder,
suffocation, ghosts, the living dead, haunted mansions, blood, and all the other lovely features of
your favorite horror movies. He’s been immensely popular in France, and many scholars attribute
this popularity to the gorgeous translations of his work by the poet Baudelaire, who rendered Poe
poetic instead of melodramatic (overly dramatic).

SUMMARY

The first five paragraphs of the story are devoted to creating a gothic mood — that is, the ancient
decaying castle is eerie and moldy and the surrounding moat seems stagnant. Immediately Poe
entraps us; we have a sense of being confined within the boundaries of the House of Usher.
Outside the castle, a storm is raging and inside the castle, there are mysterious rooms where
windows suddenly whisk open, blowing out candles; one hears creaking and moaning sounds
and sees the living corpse of the Lady Madeline. This, then, is the gothic and these are its
trappings; one should realize by now that these are all basic effects that can be found in any
modern Alfred Hitchcock-type of horror film, any ghost movie, or in any of the many movies about
Count Dracula. Here is the genesis of this type of story, created almost one hundred and fifty
years ago in plain, no-nonsense America, a new nation not even sixty years old.

ANALYSIS

“The Fall of the House of Usher” possesses the quintessential -features of the Gothic tale: a
haunted house, dreary landscape, mysterious sickness, and doubled personality. For all its easily
identifiable Gothic elements, however, part of the terror of this story is its vagueness. We cannot
say for sure where in the world or exactly when the story takes place. Instead of standard narrative
markers of place and time, Poe uses traditional Gothic elements such as inclement weather and
a barren landscape. We are alone with the narrator in this haunted space, and neither we nor the
-narrator know why. Although he is Roderick’s most intimate boyhood friend, the narrator
apparently does not know much about him—like the basic fact that Roderick has a twin sister.
Poe asks us to question the reasons both for Roderick’s decision to contact the narrator in this
time of need and the bizarre tenacity of narrator’s response. While Poe provides the recognizable
building blocks of the Gothic tale, he contrasts this standard form with a plot that is inexplicable,
sudden, and full of unexpected disruptions. The story begins without complete explanation of the
narrator’s motives for arriving at the house of Usher, and this ambiguity sets the tone for a plot
that continually blurs the real and the fantastic.

REACTION

Poe creates a sensation of claustrophobia in this story. The narrator is mysteriously trapped by
the lure of Roderick’s attraction, and he cannot escape until the house of Usher collapses
completely. Characters cannot move and act freely in the house because of its structure, so it
assumes a monstrous character of its own—the Gothic mastermind that controls the fate of its
inhabitants. Poe, creates confusion between the living things and inanimate objects by doubling
the physical house of Usher with the genetic family line of the Usher family, which he refers to as
the house of Usher. Poe employs the word “house” metaphorically, but he also describes a real
house. Not only does the narrator get trapped inside the mansion, but we learn also that this
confinement describes the biological fate of the Usher family. The family has no enduring
branches, so all genetic transmission has occurred incestuously within the domain of the house.
The peasantry confuses the mansion with the family because the physical structure has effectively
dictated the genetic patterns of the family.

References

https://www.shmoop.com/fall-of-house-of-usher/title.html

ESSAY

OF LOVE – Francis Bacon

AUTHOR

Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) was an Irish-born British figurative painter
known for his bold, grotesque, emotionally charged, raw imagery He is best known for his
depictions of popes, crucifixions and portraits of close friends. His abstracted figures are typically
isolated in geometrical cage like spaces, set against flat, nondescript backgrounds. Bacon said
that he saw images "in series", and his work typically focuses on a single subject for sustained
periods, often in triptych or diptych formats. His output can be broadly described as sequences
or variations on a single motif; beginning with the 1930s Picasso-informed Furies, moving on to
the 1940s male heads isolated in rooms or geometric structures, the 1950s screaming popes,
and the mid-to-late 1950s animals and lone figures, the 1960s portraits of friends, the nihilistic
1970s self-portraits, and the cooler more technical 1980s late works.

SUMMARY

Frances Bacon's essay "Of Love" details questions and answers regarding the very complicated
concept of love. The essay begins by comparing love to the stage. According to Bacon, love
mirrors the stage because it is filled with comedy, tragedy, mischief, and fury. Like the plays
produced on the stage, love is multidimensional.

ANALYSIS

Bacon’s essay about love is next in line, but perhaps appropriate for Thanksgiving week, when
so many people gather with the ones they love for a glorious feast. But Bacon, not surprisingly, is
not a fan of love, considering it more suitable for the stage than for a man’s life. “in life it doth
much mischief; sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury.” It makes for great theater, though.

REACTION

Great men do not allow themselves to be distracted by love. The only ancients Bacon can think
of who were thus entangled are Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony) and Appius Claudius. Bacon
says, “the former was indeed a voluptuous man, and inordinate; but the latter was an austere and
wise man: and therefore it seems (though rarely) that love can find entrance, not only into an open
heart, but also into a heart well fortified, if watch be not well kept.” Wise men keep their distance!

References

https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-francis-bacons-essay-love-279851

https://www.annacastle.com/bacons-essays-love/