No Choice is Easy No choice is easy, and people face many of them in their lifetime. Some decisions to these choices are clear while others are sometimes more difficult to decipher between. The poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is a first person narrative tale of a monumental moment in the speaker’s life. The speaker is faced between the choice of a moment and a lifetime manifested in his poem. Walking down a rural road the narrator encounters a point on his travel that diverges into two separate similar paths. In the poem the speaker presents the idea of man facing the difficult unchangeable fondness of a moment and a lifetime.
This idea is personified in the fork in the road, the decision between the two paths, and the speaker’s decision to select the road not taken. Man’s life can be metaphorically related to a physical journey filled with many twists and turns. Through out this journey there are instances where choices between alternate paths have to be made. The route the man decides to take is not always an easy one to determine. The fork in the road represents the speaker’s encounter of having to choose from two paths, a direction that will affect the rest of his life. The speaker presents the reader with a moment in anyone’s life where a difficult choice has to be made.
There are an abundance of options in life man faces, and the speaker symbolizes this into the diverging of the two paths in his poem. The decision for which path to choose from can be hard to accept, just as the revelation of the choices. The two paths represent the options man has to choose from. Faced with these decisions, man has to weigh his options carefully to make the optimal choice.
The Essay on The Importance of Authenticity in a Man’s Life
Authenticity, as defined by existentialist philosophers, is the degree to which one is true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character, despite external pressures. According to Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existence precedes essence”, in other words, man makes himself. In order for him to define himself, he should be totally free. But, how can he be free totally? Man can be totally free when he ...
At the split in the road, the speaker looks far down both the paths to see what each of the paths will bring. The speaker’s sight is limited; his eyes can only see the path until it bends into “the undergrowth.” The speaker shows man’s attempts to tell which path is better by trying to for see what they will look like down the road. Both roads diverge into a “yellow wood” and appear to be “about the same” in their purpose, yet the first of the two paths is a more common route than the other less traveled path, which “wanted wear.” The speaker presents a classic conflict; the decision between the common easy path and the extraordinary challenging path. By choosing the already known easy path in life it reassures that the outcome will be predictable, while choosing the “less traveled” road represents the gamble of facing a more difficult path in life maybe in hopes to achieve an incomparable and satisfactory life, which would contrast the more familiar lives other people take. The road not taken defines man’s choice. After hesitating between the two “fair” roads, he finally decides to take the road “less traveled by”; knowing he cannot see where it will lead.
Traveling down the second road, the speaker still yearns to travel both paths. We know this because he say’s that he will “keep the first for another day.” As the speaker proceeds down the unworn path, he realizes there will be no way he can ever return to the divergence to experience the other route. He explains this by saying “Yet knowing how way leads on to way… I doubted if I should ever come back.” The speaker presents man’s limitation to explore life’s different possibilities. He “sighs” at the end of the poem happy with his choice to take the uncommon road, yet also sighing that he may have missed something. Making “all the difference” by taking the road “less traveled” the speaker becomes a product of his decision.
The Essay on Hester And Pearl Path Road Hawthorne
The Road of a Religion Throughout The Scarlet Letter, author Nathaniel Hawthorne continuously uses the image of a road or path as a metaphor for the limited individual freedom within the Puritan religion. The road, an entity that demands adherence to a dictated direction, is similar to the structure of Puritanism, which defines a set of strict moral laws that must be followed. On pages 159-160, ...
The speaker exhibits satisfaction for enduring the uncommon route, but at the same time he “sighs” with grief, wondering what he may have missed on the alternate avenue. As successful life’s turnouts may be, there is always regret wondering how another path taken in life brings about other experiences.
