Robert Frost For the CSET

Aug
14

Filed Under CSET English, CSET Multiple Subject | Leave a Comment

Print this Article Print this Article 

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.

Analysis

Frost’s walker encounters two nearly identical paths. The walker looks down one, first, then the other, “as just as fair.” Indeed, “the passing there / Had worn them really about the same.” Frost says for a third time, “And both that morning equally lay/ In leaves no step had trodden black.”

Frost, the ironist he is, is saying: “When I am old, like all old men, I shall make a myth of my life. I shall pretend, as we all do, that I took the less traveled road. But I shall be lying.” Frost signals the mockingly self-inflated tone of the last stanza by repeating the word “I,” which rhymes – several times – with the inflated word “sigh.” Frost wants the reader to know that what he will be saying, that he took the road less traveled, is a fraudulent position, hence the sigh.

By Lupie Gonzales

http://www.ACEtheCSET.com

Lupie Gonzales Robert Frost For the CSET

Popularity: 17% [?]

Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

Continue Lesson - Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Did you find this lesson helpful? Would you like to be alerted when a new lesson like this is posted?

 Subscribe to ACE the CSET Blog
Discover What RSS Is And Why It Is So PopularWhat is RSS?

Or, Subscribe via email:

Comments

Leave a Reply





The Buzz