Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Getting Frosty

"But he is far less affirmative about the universe then [the Transcendentalists]; for where they, looking at nature, discerned a benign creator, he saw 'no expression, nothing to express.'"

Now Robert, what is that supposed to mean?

For your education, here's what Spark Notes has to say about The Road Not Taken:

"The speaker stands in the woods, considering a fork in the road. Both ways are equally worn and equally overlaid with un-trodden leaves. The speaker chooses one, telling himself that he will take the other another day. Yet he knows it is unlikely that he will have the opportunity to do so. And he admits that someday in the future he will recreate the scene with a slight twist: He will claim that he took the less-traveled road."

That's an interesting take, wouldn't you say? Especially considering that most people consider this poem to be a story of a man who didn't conform. I remember hearing in a class at some point that this poem is often misunderstood, but I can never remember what it's actual jist is supposed to be. The writer of this particular Spark Notes page feels very strongly about it:

"Cursed with a perfect marriage of form and content, arresting phrase wrought from simple words, and resonant metaphor, it seems as if “The Road Not Taken” gets memorized without really being read. For this it has died the cliché’s un-death of trivial immortality."

I appreciate this enlightenment, though I will miss the bliss of ignorance in my former interpretation of Frost.


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