Patrick Brugh
An Unusual Treatment
of �The Road Not Taken
Robert Frosts The Road Not Taken uses metaphorical language to link the theme of walking the path of life and encountering a fork in the road. Yawn.
The poem is lovely for sure: molded with imagery, painted with metaphors, and glazed with a soft cadence. But, while it borders on cliché to analyze its meaning, the poetic beauty of Robert Frosts The Road Not Taken is underwritten by Baumgartens list of definitions, axioms and theorems of poetics. The diamond-hard reasoning of the philosopher may seem excessively logical for a poem that makes moms all misty-eyed at high school graduations. When we pick apart the structure of the poem, however, we find an internal framework supported heavily by the maxims onto which Baumgarten clasps. In seeking the degree of poetic perfection, we ask to what extent Frost employs Baumgartners three essential parts of a poem (10): sensate representations, their interrelationships, and words as their signs.
The text and its history as the subject of analysis point to the same list of sensate representations (3) over and over again. To the extent which the poem handles things confusedly (15), we can point back to its metaphorical analysis. If it were to handle the theme of life decisions in a distinct (14) way, then English teachers wouldnt have to tear apart the connection of the diverging path and walking the path of life year after year. The poem also fills Baumgartens requirement of handling a determinate (18) thing, for there is nothing more real (outside Socrates cave) than life itself. By narrowing in on a specific (20) moment in life (the one decision which the narrator must make), Frost also makes the subject manageable while allowing for the sufficiently complex (23) consequences. All of this contributes to the extensive clarity of the subject, which while officially unnamed in the poem, becomes obvious through the intensive clarity of the theme (16). The finer points of the poem, which contribute to the interrelationship of sensate representations, can be grouped into three categories: 1. the surface narrative (imagery 18), 2. the metaphorical subject (non-proper meaning 79), and 3. the structural ecosystem (allegory and meter 85, 103).
The surface narrative, clearly written and not overly stylized, consists of four essential parts (stanzas), which move from a traveler encountering a fork in the road, to his consideration of each road, to his decision, and its consequences. From Baumgartens standpoint, Frost checks off all of the poetic requirements after a surface reading. He presents an image (18) of a wood and the dividing road, using sense representations to appeal to our vision (yellow, undergrowth, grassy) and hearing (trodden, sigh) and even touch when we recognize that this poem takes place in autumn. Frost also chooses the specific (20) over the general. The traveler confronts only two roads rather than trudging through the huge forest. His subject matter is tangible on the surface, as forest paths are determinate objects and thus heterocosmic (52). Finally, the components are interrelated through the complimentary narrative and its imagery.
The metaphorical subject also requires no imaginative stretch to grasp the pillars of Baumgartens poetic structure. The theme of a life journey is a sufficiently complex concept (23); the existence of a metaphorical subject recognizes poetic representation and non-proper meaning (79); and the message is clearly represented and even wonderful since we might not expect to find a life truth on a hike (43). Here, however, as we have already dug deeper into the poem, we can analyze the structure more closely. Each of the four stanzas consist of five lines, which each contain four metric feet. When we count syllables however, we unearth a second structure to the work. (Consider the graph under the poem.)
We find that the four stanzas have correspondingly alternating elevations. While the first stanza remains even at nine, the second stanza fluctuates to two extremes, coördinating nicely with the two decisions our traveler must make. In the third stanza the average number of syllables is positive (9.2 in relation to the average nine) and corresponds to the immediate decision to take the second road, while the fourth (negative at 8.6) seems to correspond to a definite sense of regret. While these seem random numbers in the grand scheme of the poem, their intentional or unintentional existence can be attached to the mood of the poem itself, and at the very least can be looked at as a kind of numerical representation of the journey itself. Additionally, scansion shows more structured, repetitive measures at the beginning of the poem than at the end. My best argument is: if Robert Frost had wanted every single line to be nine syllables, he would have made it that way; he didnt get tired after the first stanza and give up.
The final analysis of the poem as a structural ecosystem uses this varied meter and line length together with its surface and metaphorical meanings. Baumgarten states at one point, We observed...that the poet is like a...creator. So the poem ought to be like a world. (68) Indeed the poem, as an allegory of life, becomes its own world. The representation of one season recognizes the existence of the others, and the repetition of the number four (four stanzas, four feet per line) cements this idea. Those four seasons further remind us of the four seasons of life, which we can read further into each stanza of the poem. We can thus attach the alternating line lengths and metric complexities to the way in which one experiences the seasons completing an allegory of universal complexity. I would argue that, the other requirements having been more than adequately met, this metric perfection perfects the poem.
Thus we have a poem, which has been confirmed in its poetic beauty (at least by Baumgarten), and though I could spend all day twisting axioms to support it, I challenge you to find one that negates it, not because you cant, but because I didnt.
Robert Frost (1874-1963): The Road Not Taken
1 Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
2 And sorry I could not travel both
3 And be one traveler, long I stood
4 And looked down one as far as I could
5 To where it bent in the undergrowth;
6 Then took the other, as just as fair,
7 And having perhaps the better claim,
8 Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
9 Though as for that the passing there
10 Had worn them really about the same,
11 And both that morning equally lay
12 In leaves no step had trodden black.
13 Oh, I kept the first for another day!
14 Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
15 I doubted if I should ever come back.
16 I shall be telling this with a sigh
17 Somewhere ages and ages hence:
18 Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
19 I took the one less traveled by,
20 And that has made all the difference.
