The one piece of figurative language that seems to rise
above the rest in Robert Frost's poem, "The Road Not Taken," is
symbolism.
Defined, href="http://www.roanestate.edu/owl/ElementsLit.html">symbolism
is:
...when an
object is meant to be representative of something or an idea greater than the object
itself.
Though some people
may see a contradiction, the "popular" understanding of the symbol of a path that comes
to a fork in the woods is that the speaker has arrived at the point where he must make
an important life-choice. His sense of individualism drives him to take the path that
has been traveled more lightly so as not to follow the "common" path. Though the poem
simply describes a walk in the woods, finding symbolism gives "The Road Not Taken" a
much deeper meaning to an observant reader.
href="http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/lit_term.html">Personification
is also used by Frost. He speaks of the path that "wanted wear." Personification occurs
when human characteristics are given to non-human things. In this case, a path cannot
"want" anything, but is personified by the author. Also, "having perhaps the better
claim" may also be personification in saying that the path "deserved" or "asked"
(referring to "claim") to be trodden upon because it had not been worn
down.
Finally, we could say that "sigh" is an example of
href="http://ai.stanford.edu/~csewell/culture/litterms.htm">onomatopoeia,
which is defined as...
...natural sounds [that] are imitated in the
sounds of words (eg buzz,
hiss)
In other words, it is
when a word represents the sound that it stands for. The word "sigh" mimics the sound we
make when we sigh.
No comments:
Post a Comment