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The Road Not Taken

When poets write, they use several elements to create their poem including rhyme, meter, symbol, allegory, denotation, connotation, and tone as well as many other elements. For example, some poems may be taken on more than one level, depending on the poet's own meaning or what the reader may bring to the poem. This would be known as an allegory. This paper will analyze the literature elements of "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost - specifically looking at rhyme, meter, image, and meaning.

The rhyme scheme for this poem is abaab, cdccd, efeef, and ghggh. Each stanza is self-contained in its rhyme scheme, meaning that the rhymes only repeat themselves within each stanza, and not from stanza to stanza. For example, in the first stanza, neither the "oo" sound in "wood," nor the "o" sound in "both," is repeated in any of the following 3 stanzas. There are no assonant or near rhymes, nor is there any alliteration. Frost seems to have remained within a simple rhyme scheme and use the meter to fill out the rest of the sound scheme.

The meter that Frost used was iambic tetrameter. This means that there are 4 iambs, or feet per line. This is approximately 8 or so syllables per line, with the stress put on the second part of every two syllables. So it looks like: ta-TUM ta-TUM ta-TUM ta-TUM. An example of this is in the last stanza: "Two ROADS di-VERGED in a WOOD and I" (Frost line 18). This meter is also somewhat similar to the rhythm of footsteps as people walk and helps to illustrate the image of the walk that the writer is taking in the woods.

The image of the walk in the woods by the poet is first illustrated in the first 2 lines: "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood/And sorry I could not travel both" (Frost lines 1-2). The "yellow wood" referred to indicates that it this poem probably takes place during the autumn, which is the time for explorations and changes such as hunting season, the be

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The Road Not Taken. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 01:16, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1687422.html