Table of Contents
Composition
Poetic Techniques
Metaphors are used to describe things.
Similes & Alliterations
In summary
Robert Frost and Elizabeth Dickinson both have a long history of being renowned writers. Their poems have had a huge impact on the world’s literature. Dickinson wrote a great poem called “Because of Death I Couldn’t Stop” that was published with a set of poems in the year 1890. Dickinson influenced her poem with her obsession as a teenager about immortality. Death, journeys and kindness are among the many themes of Dickinson’s poem. Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” was published in his first collection in 1916. Frost’s relationship with Edward Thomas and other key writers from England influenced the poem. In this poem, there are several key themes that stand out. These include determinism, ambiguity, journeys, and decisions. Both poems depict the idea of a trip, but they also have different themes.
The poets used different elements to create the structure for their poems. Dickinson contains six stanzas each with four words. There are 24 lines in total. Frost’s work, however, has four stanzas that each have five lines. Twenty lines total are used throughout the entire poem. Dickinson’s poem is different from Frost’s because it uses a different number of syllables every time. For example, the first line from the first verse has ten words, but the second is only seven. Frost’s poems have eleven syllables per line in each stanza. The structure also includes rhyme. Dickinson has used rhymes in the poem’s opening stanza. Frost also uses rhyme in “The Road Not Taken”; for example, in the first line of the poem, “wood-stood, could, both, undergrowth.” This is the only poem that has a distinct rhyme scheme. In the first stanza Frost writes: “Two streets diverged within a yellowwood, (a). I was sorry that I couldn’t take both. (b). But to be a single traveler I stood. Both poets used line breaks, which is against the traditional rules for punctuation.
Dickinson’s poem is a good example of this. Both poets used line breaks in their poems to accomplish the same goal, which was to make the reader pause and surprise them with the next line. Dickinson uses line breaks to force the reader into a slight pause. In the first stanza of her poem, the second-line line break allows the reader a moment to think before moving on. Frost’s poem is rare in that a line-break only appears once. In the last line of the stanza.
Metaphor is a technique used by both poets to describe their journey. Dickinson used metaphors in her first stanza of the poem. “The carriage only held ourselves,” she wrote (Dickinson. 1890. p. 3). Dickinson is describing a carriage carried by the death in this instance, but it’s not a real carriage. Her statement is a metaphor for a journey through life that ends with someone dying. Frost’s poetry also uses metaphor. The entire poem revolves around metaphor. But the lines “two diverged roads” are the ones that really show the metaphor. Frost is not referring to a literal road. He speaks about the choices and life that are made on a journey. He describes the divergence as being different options and choices that are offered in each situation that calls for a choice.
Simile and Alliteration Frost’s poem uses alliteration and similes, but Dickinson did not. Frost uses similes in his poem to compare fairness to justice. Frost is trying to create a mental image of a reader making a choice. Both poems have used alliteration to enhance their writing. Dickinson’s poetry does not have as much alliteration as Frost’s. Dickinson has alliteration evident in the fifth line of his poem “he had no hurry”. “Knew” and “no hurry” both have alliteration. Frost’s alliterating word “wanted” includes “Wear”. In both words, “w” was repeated.
ConclusionIt can be concluded that Dickinson and Frost both have poems “The Road not Taken”, which share similarities as well as some differences. In this discussion it was found that both poems used similar poetic devices such as metaphors and alliteration. They also both have a theme of travel. There were also differences noted, such as Dickinson not using similes in her poem while Frost does.