Robert Frost
Robert Frost made his verse form in this poem. It is not free verse as it does have a structure and rhyme. However, it does not conform to standard closed verse forms. Frost manipulated blank verse so that it does not have iambic pentameter. The poem's theme is "be different and unique". The roads symbolize the different paths in life that people can take in life. The clear road represents the known paths and typically acceptable ones. The path that is hidden in the underbrush represents the unknown paths and paths that many have problems navigating as the path is rarely used. The speaker, possibly Frost himself, is talking about how they have taken the unknown, "less traveled", road and how that has made a different in their life.
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The sound in this Frost poem is a little different than what I am used to. The end rhyme is wonderfully done, though the pattern is a shifting one. The pattern is ABA/BCB/CDC/DAD/AA. The pattern starts with the A rhyme as the first two lines, but they are broken up by a B rhyme line. The next stanza uses two of the B rhyme and those two are broken by a C rhyme. The next stanza follows this pattern with C and D; the forth stanza uses D and reuses A. The final stanza is two lines of A rhyme. Despite this poem's simple structure, Frost uses the nine lines to create a double meaning poem that could be taken a multitude of ways. The poem talks of destruction of the world, but not just the literal destruction of the world. At the time, some scientists believed that the world would either explode due to internal heat and pressure, fire, while others believed the world would enter into another Ice Age, ice. However, this is only one meaning. When he says fire he does mean literal fire, but he is also alluding to the emotions that are associated fire; he mainly focuses on fire's typical emotions of passion and lust, or desire. Ice is used to mean emotional cold, indifferent, and apathetic in addition to literally meaning ice. Using these, the poem could be used to describe how the world would be destroyed by a emotional breakdown of those who are overly passionate, fire, or those that are too indifferent to others, ice. Frost uses passion as fire because passion would erupt and take over people's life, not literally take over, and cause them to purse their passions to destructive ends. However, ice is used as indifference, or hate in the poem, and means that people will become so hateful that they would begin to kill each other with emotional indifference. Frost's usage of language in this poem is very basic in a sense. He doesn't use many words that require much obscure English lore. The poem is simply about the speaker, who is someone on a horse riding through a forest, and the speaker stopping to listen to the wind and snow. However, the words do bring forth a familiarity with the reader, which creates a sense of casualness. This casualness makes the speaker seem to be speaking to a close friend, when he is actually speaking to no one in particular. Frost uses this tone to create a interesting tone that makes the words seem to carry much more weight than they would normally. The casualness gives a feeling of peace and weight to each word that makes them feel unique and more important. This helps add to the poem's common use for today, as the words are easy to understand and the mood created makes the words seem more familiar with people than other poems tend to do. Frost wrote this poem from the perspective of a person who is likely in a forest and thinking of committing suicide. However, the person changes their mind after a crow shakes snow of a hemlock tree and onto the person. Crows are usually connected with death and fear. Hemlock is a plant that is highly poisonous that has been used to commit suicide throughout history. The "dust of snow" is the last layer of snow that is very white and powdery. White is a color that is typically associated with purity, in this case purity of the mental state of severe depression. The poem is ironic due to a crow shaking the dust of snow off a hemlock tree and onto a person, who was contemplating suicide, thus causing the person to rethink their suicidal plans and decides to live. So two symbols of death and fear are used to helped a person. The tone reflects this irony. The tone of the poem is almost neutral, though it has a hint of remorse and humor mixed into it. It displays remorse in a slight tone of regret that he either didn't go through with his plan or that he had even considered it. However, the speaker uses, and emphasizes, humor to play off his remorse. He makes wonderful use of irony and symbolism to add humor to what would normally be a rather dark poem. The tone really helps the reader to visualize the entire scene, even if they did not know the symbolism behind the poem. |
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October 2014
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