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Extended Metaphors In The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost

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During a poetry unit, many high school students have read the words, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” These are the opening lines to “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, a famous poem included in his collection Mountain Interval. The poem starts with the narrator walking in the woods and seeing two roads split from each other. He has to decide which road to take since this decision will forever shape him as a person. The speaker must recognize what can be gained and lost by each individual road and the choice to follow it. Throughout this poem, Robert Frost uses extended metaphors to convey that every human has a path that causes them to constantly make choices that will continue to shape their lives. In the first lines of the poem, Frost states, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood/And sorry I could not travel both” (Lines 1-2). Immediately, the idea is established that the speaker has to make a decision. Which road will the speaker take? This question sets the literal and metaphorical divergence in the woods that the speaker will have to face: both an actual path through the woods and the life decisions implied by it. The first extended metaphor of choice happens in these line: the chosen path is the chosen life choices. The speaker will have to choose a road to go down and one not to, presenting the first conflict of choice. He is faced with two different roads that each lead to a different outcome. The first choice he makes will affect all the other choices to

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