Analyze and evaluate Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken Essay

Analyze and evaluate Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken - Essay Example According to Larry Finger (1978), he once told an audience, â€Å"You have to be careful of that one; it’s a tricky poem - very tricky† (478) when referring to this poem. The title of the poem is â€Å"The Road Not Taken† rather than â€Å"The Road Less Taken† (emphasis added), which provides the first clue as to the author’s original intentions and a different reading of the poem. Understanding Frost’s background enables one to analyze the poem through each of its four stanzas and trace the linguistic tools used by the author to make his personal philosophical meaning clear. Robert Frost was born in 1874 in San Francisco, California. Although he lived in small apartments throughout the city during his first 11 years, Frost is more commonly associated with the natural scenes of the New England countryside that is used in his poetry (Parini 2000, 3). When his father died, Frost moved with his mother and sister to his paternal grandparents’ home in Massachusetts until his mother found a teaching post in nearby Salem. Life was always a struggle for Frost and his family, but he did well in school and helped on the farm and eventually earned a scholarship to Dartmouth, supplemented by his grandfather, in 1892. Soon after this and before receiving a degree, he returned home to take over his mother’s unruly classroom. He did this and other odd jobs until his secret fiancà © Eleanor graduated from St. Lawrence University and they could get married (Pirini 2000). Frost then began attending Harvard until it became necessary for him to support his gr owing family. His grandfather bought him a farm that Frost attempted to work, but he eventually returned to teaching, through it all demonstrating a heavy preference and talent in the area of literature. However, by this time, his writing was beginning to gain recognition and he was developing his own style and poetic approach. â€Å"The Road Not Taken†