The traveler also realizes that they do not want to be exposed to a situation like this anymore, given that they understand the current circumstance attributable to the phrase “yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.” Essentially, the traveler realizes the path they have chosen in order to arrive to this point (in the poem and in the journey again, given the current circumstance), and that knowing how things lead to other things introduces a doubtable possibility, which would be returning. In the remaining three lines, the traveler appears to have made a decision, apparently evident in the line “oh, I kept the first for another day!” in which he favors the second path over the first one, and intends to take the first path sometime later or afterwards. In the first two lines of the third stanza, it is now known that the time of day is early, that the area still remains as it was previously, and none of the leaves covering both paths have turned black from the constant on-foot traversal of other human beings “and both that morning equally lay…in leaves no step had trodden black.” It can also be inferred that the traveler is spending a long time thinking about which path he should take, in which the same is done for weighing the options for a choice which has to be made. When deciding upon the choice you want to make with the provided options, examining or observing the characteristics of both options is a key aspect of decision-making. It can be inferred that at this point, the traveler is indecisive of which path should be taken, since no decision was actually made at this point in the poem. In the remaining lines of the stanza, he examines how this path of the divergence appears to be slightly more worn (possibly from more people traveling on it) than the other, noted in the second and third lines “and having perhaps the better claim… because it was grassy and wanted wear…” in which he actually comes to the conclusion that the paths are mostly identical in the fourth and fifth lines of the stanza “though as for that the passing there… had worn them really about the same.” In the second stanza of the poem, the traveler again examines the secondary path and makes his own observations about it in the first line “then took the other, as just as fair…” in which he concludes that both of the paths are mostly identical. Oftentimes in life when a decision for a choice has to be made, people observe the given options in every manner, to see and decide which one would be the best one to make, as the traveler is doing in this case for either of the paths he has the option of taking. ![]() The first stanza of Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken portrays a traveler who has encountered a road divergence in which only one of its paths can be taken, in the first line “two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” Being a traveler, he closely examines one of the paths of the divergence, although his exploratory actions as a traveler are explained in the second and third lines of the stanza “and be one traveler, long I stood… and looked down one as far as I could…” in which he gauges the safety of the path and the possible outcome before coming to a decision for which path he decides to continue on. Once the sole option has been decided upon amidst the other options and possible outcomes that are given, a sense of confidence is attained and this instills the ideology into one’s mind that they have made the right choice, and they can now continue unobstructed in life with this positive mindset, knowing they made the right choice, and when it is reflected upon later on in life, the earlier instillation of the ideology-that they made the right choice that time-is still present during the reflection. This is one of the reasons why it is important to spend time thinking about which option that should be chosen, lest a wrong or unfavorable decision is made. When one is presented with a set of options pertinent to an important choice in life, they explore all of the possible outcomes of the options pertaining to that single choice. ![]() The theme that I choose to explicate concerns choice, or experiencing a time in life in which a choice has to be made given a set of possible options. ![]() ![]() The purpose of the explication of these two poems is to correlate them in order to establish a common theme that they both possess, originating from both of the poems’ individual themes. The two poems written by Robert Frost that are going to be explicated are named “The Road Not Taken,” written in 1916, and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” in 1922.
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