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Transcript: Robert Frost Poetry Analysis: The Road Not Taken and Other
Poems
https://study.com/academy/lesson/robert-frost-the-road-not-taken-and-other-poems.html

One of Robert Frost's most famous poems is 'The Road Not Taken'. Analyze Frost's poetry, explore the elements of
modernist poetry, and explore contradiction, interpretation, and mood of 'The Road Not Taken'.

Robert Frost: A Modernist or Not?

Robert Frost was a well-known American modernist poet. Like other modernist poets, he wrote his poems in ways that were
new and different when he was writing, at the beginning of the 20th century. But unlike other modernists, Frost also kept
some of the traditional aspects of poetry. You might say he was caught between two movements: the traditional movement
and the modernist movement in poetry.

Modernist poetry is different from traditional poetry in several ways: it uses simplified language and often abandons
traditional rhyme and meter. In addition, the modernist poets moved away from using images of nature, and they viewed the
world with a more pessimistic lens. Finally, the modernists often left their poems vague and open to interpretation by the
reader.

Like his contemporaries, Frost favored using simplified

language in his poems. And he wrote poems that were not
always optimistic. He also lets his readers interpret his
poems by leaving them a little bit vague. But unlike other
modernist poets, Frost stuck to using traditional meter and
rhyme. He also lived in the countryside and used mostly
natural images in his poems. So Frost was a modernist, and
he also wasn't. He was a bit of a rebel from both sides. Let's
take a look at one of his most famous poems and see how it
and some of his other poetry both exemplify and go against Robert Frost wrote in new ways, but still kept some traditional
modernist ideals and how life in the countryside influenced characteristics.
the images he used in his writing.

'The Road Not Taken'

Robert Frost's most famous poem is called 'The Road Not Taken.' Let's start by reading the poem.

'The Road Not Taken'

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 bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Traditional Elements in a Modernist Poem

There are several things in this poem that are usually seen in traditional, not modernist, poetry. First of all, you probably
noticed that the poem rhymes. In fact, it follows a traditional rhyme pattern. What do I mean by that? Well, you'll notice that
in each stanza there are five lines. The first, third and fourth lines rhyme with each other, and the second and fifth lines
rhyme with each other. This type of rhyme pattern is usually summed up as 'ABAAB.' The 'A's represent the lines that rhyme
with each other; likewise, the two lines that are labeled 'B' rhyme with each other.
Besides rhyme, the poem has a traditional meter, or rhythm. Each line has a specific number of syllables, and certain
syllables are stressed when they are read. Meter is something that Frost liked to use a lot, even when he didn't use rhyme.

A third, and very important, element in this poem that is not

normally seen in modernist poetry is its use of natural
imagery. The poem is about someone alone in the woods,
and all the descriptions are of nature. Though most
modernist poets did not spend a lot of time describing
nature, Frost lived in a rural setting, and most of his poems
focused on nature.

Contradiction and Interpretation in

This poem follows a traditional, not a modernist, rhyme pattern. the Poem
So with all those elements of traditional poetry, what makes
this poem modern? Well, for one thing, the language is very basic. But the most important modernist elements of this poem
have to do with the poem's meaning: there are a lot of things that aren't clear in the poem, and the mood of the poem is not
necessarily uplifting. First, let's look at the way Frost makes the poem unclear. In the second stanza, he describes one of
the paths as 'grassy and wanted wear.' In other words, fewer people had gone down that path than the other path.

But almost immediately, he contradicts himself: the next lines say that the two paths were worn 'really about the same.' And
at the beginning of the next stanza, he says that both paths 'equally lay/In leaves no step had trodden black.' So not only
were both paths free of the footsteps of people, they were both covered in leaves, despite the fact that he had just described
one of them as grassy. And the story changes again in the famous last words of the poem:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

In those lines, he says again that one of them was less traveled than the other. Is Frost's narrator being dishonest, or is he
just confused? A clue might lie in the beginning of the last stanza, when he says that he 'shall be telling this with a
sigh/Somewhere ages and ages hence.' In other words, he's telling this many years after it happened. Could it be that he
was misremembering after all those years? Like many modernist poems, Frost leaves it vague and open to interpretation.
As the reader, we get to decide what the answer to that question is.

The Mood of the Poem

Many people see this poem as very uplifting. But when you read closely, you can see that Frost didn't have the same rosy
outlook that many other people do. Did you notice in the first lines of the last stanza that he says he 'shall be telling this with
a sigh?' The sigh implies that perhaps things didn't turn out the way he'd planned them to. Another thing that makes the
poem less uplifting than it might first appear is the title. Because of the next to last line of the poem, many people incorrectly
believe that the title of the poem is 'The Road Less Traveled,' but it's not. The title of the poem is 'The Road Not Taken.' It's
as if, years later, he's thinking back and wondering if he should have taken the other road. That's a very modernist view.

Other Poems
Robert Frost wrote many modernist poems besides 'The Road Not Taken.' In 'Mending Wall,' a man and his neighbor get
together to fix the fence that separates their two properties. When the narrator tells his neighbor that perhaps they don't
need a fence between them after all, his neighbor replies 'Good fences make good neighbors.' Like 'The Road Not Taken,'
this poem has a sense of ambiguity to it. That is, it is unclear what it means. Even the narrator isn't quite sure what his
neighbor means!

'Birches,' another famous poem by Frost, is about a man who imagines climbing and swinging from birch trees as a child.
He yearns for the simplicity of childhood and ends the poem with the famous line, 'One could do worse than become a
swinger of birches.' In this poem, the narrator is alone in the woods, just like in 'The Road Not Taken,' and both poems share
a feeling of isolation.

Lesson Summary
Robert Frost was a famous American modernist poet. He used traditional elements in his poems, but all of them, especially
the famous poem 'The Road Not Taken,' also include modernist elements. The things that make 'The Road Not Taken'
modernist include simple language, the fact that the poem is unclear and the not-quite-happy mood of the poem.

Learning Outcomes
After watching this lesson, you should be able to:

Differentiate between modernist and traditional poetry

Summarize Robert Frost's poem 'The Road Not Taken'
Identify both the traditional and modernist aspects of 'The Road Not Taken'
Name and describe two of Frost's other poems