Poetry Coursework

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Poetry Coursework

Is it safe to assume that the choices we make affect our lives? The poems “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost and “The Choosing” by Liz Lochhead both deal with the theme of choices and the consequences of choices we make. The poem “The Road Not Taken” is more symbolic (“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood”), metaphorical (“And looked down one as far as I could/to where it bent in the undergrowth”) and it gives the reader some advice for their own choices. “The Choosing” is written more with a personal tone as if the poet had experienced the events first hand (“But from the top deck of the high-school bus/I’d glimpse among the others in the corner”). I enjoyed the second poem for its more personal tone rather than the general wise tone of the first. However in analysing them I have found that “The Road Not Taken” is a much more meaningful poem as this work should show.

The poem “The Road Not Taken” has both a metaphorical and a literal meaning. Literally it is about a traveller walking in the woods and he comes to two roads both going in different directions. As he cannot travel both he has to decide which road would be better for him.

        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 to way,

        I doubted I should ever come back

The above stanza shows the reader the differences in the two roads and the person’s knowledge that he would not return to go the other road. The traveller chooses the road less travelled by which according to him makes “all the difference”

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Figuratively, “The Road Not Taken” can be applied in a person’s life. The traveller is a person who had two choices which is represented by the two roads in the poem. The Traveller then contemplates how both paths may chance his life (as someone might think about when choosing between two ideas) and he chooses the path that was less travelled by which could represent a person picking the harder option over the simpler one that probably most people would have chosen. This poem however has tones of regret which the title of the poem reflects as it is ...

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