Katlynn Lew
Ms. Debbie Lichtman
English 11 CP
February 10, 2015
Robert Lee Frost The well-known, all-American poet, Robert Lee Frost is greatly admired for his perception of rural life. Unlike many other modern poets, Frost had a unique style of writing, turning ordinary conversations into poetry. In his narratives there are literal meanings as well as interpretations. The poems written by Robert Lee Frost were greatly influenced by his emotions toward the natural world, the death of many people close to him, and his depression. The two poems that show Frost’s relation to the modernist literary time period are “The Road Not Taken” and “Acquainted with the Night.” “The Road Not Taken” is about the choices that the speaker had to make while
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Frost used nature to illustrate real-life situations that many people can relate to. Many times Frost uses symbolism to get his point across to his audience. For example, in, “The Road Not Taken,” he used “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood” (Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken”) to symbolize the different choices the speaker has to make in life by comparing them to two separate paths that a speaker comes to in the woods. He then says, “…long I stood / And looked down one as far as I could” (Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken”), what Frost means by this is the speaker tries to decide which path would be the best by looking at the positives and negatives of each choice. Often times one is not able to see all the different consequences so everything is not what it seems to be from the beginning. This poem along with many others of Frost’s work is a free verse poem. Different from the contemporary period, many writers in the modern time period did not use old techniques and rhyme schemes but instead wrote using free …show more content…
man. “He suffered from long bouts of depression and continual self-doubt” (“Robert Frost Biography-Poems”). In Acquainted with the Night, Frost’s depression and loneliness is expressed. He writes “I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. /I have outwalked the furthest city light” (Frost, Robert “Acquainted with the Night”). These two lines show that no matter where he goes, his depression still follows him and he cannot escape the unhappiness he feels. His detachment from society is also shown in this poem when he writes, “I have passed by the watchman on his beat/And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain” (Frost, Robert “Acquainted with the Night”). This shows that he has withdrawn from society by not talking or explaining any of his problems to anyone but instead keeping to