Frost Vs Whitman

Last week, we read and analyzed two poems: “Song of the Open Road” by Walt Whitman and “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. In “Song of the Open Road”, the speaker declares his desire to live life to the fullest, complaining of the claustrophobic conditions of his former lifestyle – “done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms”, he whines. Like the speaker, Whitman himself breaks from the conventional, yet rigidly-structured forms of poetry of his time, opting instead to write poetry in free-form with no rhymes, usually modeled after the vernacular qualities of Biblical poetry. Both speaker and author choose to abandon the norms of society in favor of living a freer, more fulfilling lifestyle, unknowingly opening the door

Indecisive, he yearns to travel both roads, but he knows that by choosing one, he would end up completely cut off from the other – “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, /I doubted I should ever come back,” he says, implying that the opportunity to take the other path is lost when one is chosen. In the end, he finally decides to choose the one less traveled, saying that “it has made all the difference.” Frost’s writing style is often mirrored in his many works, possibly more so in “The Road Not Taken”. Like the speaker, Frost is often faced with crossroads – “crossroads of 19th century American poetry and modernism” (para. 1) that is. According to poetry critics and advocates, Frost’s verses often combined 19th century traditions and techniques with those of the 20th century. He wrote with a strict “adherence to meter, line length, and rhyme scheme” while utilizing “the natural rhythms of

In “The Road Not Taken”, the speaker is confronted with two roads, two defining choices that could change his life in an instant. I feel that readers could better identify with this idea of choice – after all, everyone has to make difficult decisions sometime in their life. As readers, we understand the speaker’s situation having, at one point, gone through it ourselves. For example, I spent much of my free time last year debating with myself: should I attend Middle College in the hopes of accelerating my education or Bear Creek, with some of my closest friends? Where would I feel most comfortable? How will my choice affect my future? Frost’s poem also touches on themes of individualism – his speaker chose “the road less traveled.” He is, in a sense, encouraging us to make our decisions without regard to the influence of others – we should let our choices be purely our own. In addition, Frost suggests that choosing the more difficult path can lead to better rewards, such as more experience and knowledge, and will “make all the difference”. Aesthetic-wise, Frost’s use of a consistent rhyme scheme and steady rhythm greatly contributed to my enjoyment of the