Preview

Robert Frost Figurative Language

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2006 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Robert Frost Figurative Language
In each of his poems, Robert Frost uses multiple stylistic devices and figurative language to convey certain theme, mostly having to do with nature, that ultimately show his modernist style and modernist views on life.
In the poem “Mowing,” the speaker of the poem is mowing his field trying to make grass. While doing this, he ponders the sound that his scythe is trying to “whisper” (Frost 26). The poem is organized into two sections: an octet and a sextet. In the octet, Frost mainly focuses on the sound that the scythe is trying to make by using personification of the scythe. The speaker, in the first part, is trying to describe the “whispering of the scythe” (26) as something very abstract and imaginative. However, in the sextet, he completely
…show more content…
Both roads are equally “worn” (103) and laid with untrodden leaves. The speaker faces a decision and decides on one of the roads. After making this decision, he says that he will choose the other road next time, but he knows that will be very unlikely. Therefore, in the future, the speaker will recreate the scene and claim that he chose the less traveled road. In this poem, Frost uses mostly strict masculine rhymes such as “wood,” “claim,” and “black” (103) with an iambic tetrameter that creates a rhythm with a strong beat and each line is stopped completely. This resembles the way the fork in the road completely stops the speaker in his tracks and the rhythm mimics his walking down the road toward the unknown. Additionally, a fork in the road represents a crisis or important decision on a life road and the speaker is free to choose whichever path he wants, but without knowing what he is choosing between because both roads are equally worn and both lead to an unknown. The speaker also states that in the future, before saying that he chose the road less traveled, he will “sigh” (103) which indicates that not even he believes it because inside he will always remember the equal roads at the fork in the “yellow woods” and that his choice was just based on chance and not knowledge of any real differences. Therefore, there is really no right decision; only the chosen road and the other road. …show more content…
Frost states “Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor” (59). This line represents Robert Frost because many of Frost’s poems deal with change, such as in “Out, Out” and “Home Burial,” and the change of nature and of people. According to the analysis of the poems of Frost, he seems to believe in reality, facts, and truth rather than fantasy or imagination. Therefore, in this quote, Frost is stating that change in life is due to the truths of life becoming “in and out of favor.” These truths become so because of their nature and what is meant to happen. Nature and truth are two things that Frost is ultimately all

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost Outline

    • 1015 Words
    • 5 Pages

    He includes Literal meanings in his poetry and also hidden meanings. He likes to give the reader messages after they read his poems. From his poetry we see allusion, imagery, and symbolism in his poetry to give the reader feelings while reading. Robert Frost is considered to be one of the greatest poets of the 20th century,…

    • 1015 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost gives his readers a speaker standing at a “fork” in the road- or having to make a decision. Robert Frost uses extended metaphor, irony, and an unreliable narrator to show his reader’s that, when choosing life courses, one must consider where the path is actually going verses from how it may appear. Decisions fill the lives of human beings, and this speaker faces the remorse he holds for the decisions he’s made.…

    • 718 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The theme of Frost's poem has everything to do with nature. Also renewal, growth, and change. The way that these are in relation to each other because you can find them all in nature.…

    • 551 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Beach Burial Slessor

    • 1457 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The poem "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost is a first person narrative tale of a monumental moment in the author’s life. He 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 Robert Frost’s poem "The Road Not Taken", Frost presents the idea of man facing the difficult unalterable choice of a lifetime. This idea in Frost’s poem is embodied in the fork in the road, the decision between the two paths, and the speaker’s decision to select the road not taken.…

    • 1457 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frost uses the images presented in the poem in a very involved and general way. The paths and the fork no longer refer to their definitions, but instead as keywords in a description of life. Through the poem, Frost is defining life as a series of decisions. Some of these decisions may, at the time, be thought of as insignificant, while others could be thought of as very significant. Frost argues that a decision's significance at the time is not really important, for any choice will change one's life. Every day, people, including the narrator of the poem, are presented with "Two roads" that diverge "in a yellow wood." These roads are not concrete or physical, but rather represent choices. The fact that one road is "grassy and wanted wear" while the other was commonly traversed shows the reader that some choices require one to choose something that is not commonly sought or to do something…

    • 1092 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ap English Speech Essay

    • 553 Words
    • 3 Pages

    This is evident in The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost where a metaphor of a road is used assiduously throughout this poem to establish the way of life the persona has traveled. Colour imagery through “yellow wood” establishes not only a physical change i.e. change in season, but also a change in the realm of the mind. The persona’s justification of choice is evident through the simile “then took the other, as just as fair” This decision is then contemplated, where the imagination explores the consequences of some choices. Have you ever looked back and felt some regret? The line “I shall be telling this with a sigh” depicts this reflection and possible regret by use of emotive language. The value of this reflection process through the imaginative journey is clear in the last line “and this has made all the…

    • 553 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost Allusion

    • 421 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Robert Frost makes an allusion to an accident that happened in Vermont back in 1916. He chooses to make an allusion back to Shakespeare's Macbeth. The allusion refers to the queen's life quickly ending after her chop to her head. She quickly bleeds to death. In "Out, Out," the boy carelessly drops the buzz saw after being distracted by a time of fulfillment known better as supper. Soon realizing the carelessness of his mistake, pleads to his sibling to not allow the doctor to amputate his appendage. The sunset alludes to the coming of darkness, known as death. The allusion also set irony to the setting, because sunset can also display a calm, serene atmosphere. The buzzing and rattling of the buzz saw represents the harsh labor the boy was forced to endure. Buzzing is the actual work and the rattling is the idle time between. The mountain acts as a barrier so that no noise or external factors can interfere with the coming disaster. Frost adds a tidbit more of irony when the boy's "rueful laugh" expels from his mouth, because rueful inspires pity but laughing represents glee.…

    • 421 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages

    to themselves, Frost uses this to tell the story in ‘The Wood-Pile’ showing how this poem is moving forward it is an expedition. ‘The hard snow held me, save where now and then’ the words used here come across as very harsh as snow is normally soft not hard, this inflicts the change in the nature in the area of where the narrator is it always uses visual imagery so the picture of the woods is shown. ‘A small bird flew before me’ A technique that Frost uses is anthropomorphism which is used for the bird, as he shows him as if it is his "last stand".…

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Robert Frost Research Paper

    • 2980 Words
    • 12 Pages

    Everyone has morals in life. Weather learned from nature, family, or past experiences. Robert Frost is well known for using different themes to teach morals in his poems. He uses imagery, emotions, different views, symbolism, and ever nature, to help create an image in one’s mind. The morals that these different types of themes create will make the reader face decisions and consequences as if they were in the poem themselves. His morals can be found in the poems, “The Road Not Taken,” “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” “Out, Out,” and “Acquainted with the Night.” Robert Frost’s poetry uses different themes to create morals which readers will use in daily life. “He is fairly taciturn about what happens to us after death, partly because he finds so much to engage his attention here and now” (Jennings 173).…

    • 2980 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Road Not Taken Tone

    • 1060 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The speaker makes these connotations based on his word choice. In the beginning of the poem he mentions how he was “sorry I could not travel both” (2). He wishes he could have traveled both roads, not that he was just certain he wanted to travel one over the other. He regrets the fact he could not travel both. Even after making a choice he “kept the first for another day! / Yet knowing how way leads to way, / I doubted if should ever come back” (13-15). The speaker still is uncertain and wants to travel the other road. He is worried that by not taking the other road he has encountered missed opportunities. Later, he “shall be telling this with a sigh” that he is proud of his decision. However, with the use of the sigh it is apparent that the speaker is regretful of his decision. Throughout the poem, Frost portrays a regretful tone to show the distress and uncertainty the speaker is facing in making this…

    • 1060 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost Tone

    • 1029 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Within “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, the narrator illustrates the surroundings with such clarity; the reader could almost feel like he was standing in the woods with the speaker. The narrator expresses the solitude of the woods by commenting “To stop without a farmhouse near” (6). They illustrate for the reader that they are between the woods which are “lovely, dark and deep” (13) and a lake that has frozen over with the arrival of winter. The only sounds the narrator hears, other than the shaking of their horses harness bells, are the wind and snow falling. This strengthens the poems tone of isolation within the surroundings, as well as the narrator.…

    • 1029 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As noted above, Frost uses many techniques to explain the significant of the poem. The most important aspect of the poem is the extended metaphor of the…

    • 583 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the previous verses Frost explains in narrative one road to be the road that the traveler like stated earlier can be assumed to be Frost himself, to be road he will choose. However, that is not the case in that we find that the lyric has changed. Bringing confrontation with the other road to be explained as “having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear; though as for that the passing there had worn them really about the same”. Frost emotions have changed when he gazed upon the second road. This is what brought the irony of the poem and also shows good use of nominally poetry. Meaning the sectioning a poem to where it was written, putting the poem “The Road Not Taken” into that category. I believe the second verse of the poem grabs the attention of the reader, Frost changing the tone of the poem showing dilemma the traveler faces. This also brings the curiosity of the reader and brings them to make decision themselves of which path they would choose and would the traveler choose the same…

    • 1001 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During his life, Robert Frost, the icon of American literature, wrote many poems that limned the picturesque American Landscape. His mostly explicated poems “Birches” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” reflect his young manhood in the rural New England. Both of these poems are seemingly straightforward but in reality, they deal with a higher level of complexity and philosophy. Despite the difference in style and message, “Birches” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” are loaded with vivid imagery and symbolism that metaphorically depict the return to the nature and childhood, the struggle between reality and imagination, and also freedom and captivation.…

    • 732 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” This is one of many quotes by Robert Frost. He defied his quote in all of his poetry. Robert Frost surely had something to say to the world and he delivered his message through all of his great works. Throughout his poems Robert Frost uses imagery to develop strong pieces of literature. His imagery appeals further then our senses; he develops a poem which is filled with deep meaning, a poem which captures feelings and beliefs. In his poems Frost also uses nature to represent several things in his poems. Once understood the poem becomes a much better experience for the reader. His poems, once read, become wonderful works which will stay with you forever.…

    • 1283 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays