Essay About Robert Frosts Poem Symbolism And Yellow Wood

The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost
Essay Preview: The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost
Report this essay
“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 bends in the
under growth,”(Frost, 2010, Ch.2.2)., “The Road Not Taken,” an excerpt written by Robert
Frost. There are many items in this passage that contain symbolism. Symbolism of the journey
the author uses symbols to explain a story or poem so that the reader can find the underlying
meaning. In addition to Robert Frosts poem symbolism of the journey can be found in another
piece of literary work read throughout this course. This also can be found in other well-known
literature by Eudora Welty, “A Worn Path.” Both writings display similar themes, different
points of view, showing how life can change with each journey, and both literatures have the
journey in common.
“Robert Frost was considered one of the most popular and beloved American poets of the
20th Century. The careful local observations and homely details of his poems often have deep
symbolic, even metaphysical, significance. His poems are concerned with human tragedies and
trepidation, (Frost, 2008). The poem, “The Road Not Taken” is no different from what the
Columbia Encyclopedia describes about his work. The first words of the poem discuss two roads
that separate in a yellow wooded setting. Yellow symbolizes more than just a color in this use.
The color yellow symbolizes decay or aging, (Clugston, 2010, Ch.7.2). This has a significant
symbolism to the poem. He portrays aging well associating with the color (yellow).
Robert Frost tells this poem in a first person point of view. “First person point of view is
when the speaker or narrator who tells about things he or she has seen, done, heard, thought, and
also learned about in other ways,” (Roberts, Jacobs, 2007, P.1). He tells the story as if he is
looking back on his life, recalling the past events that led him to where he is in his current life.
He uses the picture of the fork in the road to describe two different journeys that he could take:
however, when he states, “then took the other, as just as fairhad worn them really about the
same,”(Frost, 2010). He is stating that neither path is better than the other but really that they are
about the same. Nevertheless, with the