The road not taken literary devices full#

(Hopefully the perspective is self-explanatory since Socratic is already complaining about this answer's length). #color(white)('XX')#weak-strong-weak-strong-weak-weak-strong-weak-strongĬan be applied (with some care) to every line of this poem. The rhyme scheme is reassuringly there, undergirding the work. ' #color(white)('xxx')#! #color(white)('xxx')# ' #color(white)('x')#! #color(white)('x')# ' #color(white)('xxx')# ' #color(white)('xx')#! #color(white)('xxx')# ' #color(white)('xx')# ! The poem consists of four tidy, carefully structured quintains, that is stanzas with five lines.

Using ! under strong beat syllables and ' under weak beat syllables, here is what I cam up with for the first two lines of the first verse: Working from the 'syllablified' lines, work out a pattern of 'strong beats' (the syllables that you really 'punch' when you are reading) and 'weak beats' #color(white)('XX')#the comma must be read as a pause (a very weak beat). Frost also includes a lot of nature imagery, as the poem is set in the woods during autumn. The fork in the road also stands for the decisions that one must make. The most obvious metaphor in this poem compares the roads to the speaker's life.

The road not taken literary devices full#

#color(white)('XX')# diverged (di-verg-ed) as di-verg'd Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken' is full of many literary devices, including metaphor and imagery. In The Path Not Taken most lines contain 9 syllables, but some 'fudging' is necessary to be able to read the poem with a consistent pattern of 9 syllables per line.įor example, line 1 of verse one, we need to read: Break the lines of the poem down into a consistent number of syllables per line. Personally I find rhythm the most difficult to extract in an analytic manner (although, with a good poem, it's form is usually intuitive). Which gives a rhyme pattern: #color(red)(a) - color(blue)(b) - color(red)(a) - color(red)(a) - color(blue)(b)#Ĭhecking this against the remaining verses show that this pattern continues for all verses in the poem. Using the first verse as a prototype, the lines end with:

The rhyme or rhyme pattern is based on the endings of lines in each verse. Metaphor - The whole poem is an extended metaphor and the road acts as a metaphor for life. The only example I found was a the end of the middle line of the second verse: 'wanted wear'. The fastest way to understand the poem's meaning, themes, form, rhyme scheme, meter, and poetic devices. There is relatively little alliteration (use of the same sound or letter at the beginning of adjacent words) in The Road Not Taken. The best The Road Not Taken study guide on the planet. For any unfamiliar with this poem, the complete form can be found here