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Imagery is figurative language that appeals to the reader’s senses. Autumn often symbolizes our later years, and in this case the symbolism helps us envision the speaker as an older person who has spent many years on the road of life. The fact that this poem is set in autumn, indicated by the fact that the leaves are yellow, can also be seen as a symbol. The fork in the road is symbolic of major life choices. The road is a symbol for the journey of life. In ‘The Road Not Taken,’ many of the examples of metaphor are also symbols. Symbolism is figurative language that infuses literal things with symbolic meaning. Finally, in lines 13-15, the speaker realizes he will never be able to come back to the place where the two roads split: Oh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,I doubted if I should ever come back.We can read this as a metaphor for life-changing decisions that forever alter our path.
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In line 6, the speaker suddenly decides to take the path he has not been examining: Then took the other, as just as fair,This can be seen as a metaphor for making a spur-of-the moment decision in life. For example, in lines 4-5, the road becomes a metaphor for the future: And looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth The speaker looks down the path and can only see so far, in the same way that we can’t see the consequences of our choices in the future.
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The fork in the road is a metaphor for the choices we must make as we navigate our path.Within the larger extended metaphor are smaller ones. The road in the poem is a metaphor for life and the path we take through it. In fact, the metaphor applies throughout the entire poem, which makes it an extended metaphor if you’re being picky about it. Metaphor is probably this poem’s most obvious example of figurative language. In this lesson we will break down some of the figurative language in Robert Frost’s famous poem ‘ The Road Not Taken.’ MetaphorĪ metaphor is an implicitly made comparison between two seemingly unlike things. The speaker in this poem tells us that he took the road " less traveled by." this suggests tha.* All Partners were chosen among 50+ writing services by our Customer Satisfaction Team One decision lead to other decisions and we can never return to where or what we were before making that decision. The symbolism of roads makes it clear because "one way leads on to way," it is very doubtful that he will ever come back to take the other road. He tries to make himself feel better by saying that he left "the first for another day." However, he realizes that this is unlikely. He expresses regret that he could not take both roads. The speaker looks down one road and then goes down the other. when we come to a "fork in the road" we have to decide which road to take. Ideally, we would like to have it all and not have to choose, but life is not like that. There are advantages and disadvantages that have to be weighed. One is as fair as the other and "both that morning equally lay/in leaves no step had trodden black." What this symbolizes is that in life, difficult decisions usually involve alternatives that are closely balanced. What does Robert Frost tell us about making decisions through the symbolism in the poem? First of all, we are told that the two roads are quite similar. However, when we assume that the two roads symbolize hard decisions we have to make in life, then the poem becomes far more interesting to us. If the poem did not contain symbolism and was merely a story about a person walking in the woods, it would not be such an appealing and memorable work. In the poem, the author tells of a situation where the speaker comes across a fork in the road and he has to decide which road he is going to take. For example, in the symbolize leaving to make a difficult decision in life. Symbolism helps the details of a poem to say more and mean more. Many poem use symbolism to reveal certain parts of life or to say something important about life and about people.
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