"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference

This poem has many themes including the concept of

1.     Choices: The path is described as being split in two different directions giving the reader a foretelling that a choice has to be made.

2.     Exploration: The speaker of this poem is in the forest with no material object for navigation like a map, even though he does not have a map he does not go back rom where he came, instead he is willing to face head on anything that comes his way and face the consequences of his choices he makes. In a way he is exploring his inner self.

Tone:

The tone of this poem is passive and positive yet sad and disappointed.

Imagery:

Lines 8-11 talk about how grassy the road is and it describes that it is morning. It also says that he doesn’t know which road is the better choice. “Because it was grassy and wanted wear, though as for that, the passing there. Had worn them really about the same, and both that morning equally lay”

Symbolism:

The roads are the symbolism in this poem as it refers to roads we travel physically and roads we take emotionally throughout our course in life.

Figure of Speech:

The figure of speech in this poem is used in the last lines 19-20. Frost uses verbal irony to say the complete opposite of what he means when he says: “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” It also has alliteration in the way he uses words like “wanted wear” and “way leads onto way”.

Setting:

The setting of the poem is in a yellow forest and the narrator is on foot. It is also described to be set in the morning.

How important is the role of metrics, such as rhyme and rhythm?

It is written in Iambic Tetrameter. Frost’s metrical system was made so it gives the poem both metrical form and freedom. The whole poem roughly sounds like music when he uses words like “wood”, “could”, “stood”, “grassy”, “passing” etc.

How does the form influence the overall effect of the poem?

The form is basically narrative and the chronological form written in this poem gives the reader a better way of understanding the situations and the emotions the author implemented for this poem.

"Marriage Is a Private Affair" by Chinua Achebe

The story is about a man named Okeke from an Ibo tribe of Nigeria who has a son (Nnaemka) that wants to marry the woman (Nene) he loves, even though she is not from the same tribe. When Okeke hears about his son’s plans he refuses to take any participation in it and expresses that he will not give notion to the idea of his son marrying someone from a different tribe. Nnaemka marries Nene anyway and the two live happily with their children. The story ends with Okeke reading a letter from Nene and entering a crossroads where he has to choose whether to keep his pride and sense of tradition, or accept that his son can make his own decisions and see his grandchildren.

The story’s theme which is the clash of two different generations whom themselves think in very opposite ways. This has happened throughout history especially in the modern world we live in. This is because the present day world is subject to rapid cultural change and people are realizing that the ways of the old sometimes isn’t the right way to go about things. This generation gap has made parents and children stop talking because of the immense difference in their thinking and the time they were raised in. What may be inappropriate for a generation can be totally appropriate to another. The other theme of the story is the cultural way of arranging marriages for their children. Religious beliefs, social class and culture play an immense role when it comes to arranging marriages. People in the world should be free to believe what they want to believe but they should not force their beliefs unto others.

"Grass Eaters" by Krishnan Varma

The founding fathers of the United States of America wrote five basic rights in which every citizen would fall heir to. The best right is “the pursuit of happiness”, happiness, such a simple world that has an innumerable amount of interpretations in the world. What is the happiness of some, maybe the misery of others. In the story written by Krishnan Varma, the happiness of the main protagonist Ajit Babu, might very well be the misery of the people who live in the modern western empire we call “America”. This story emphasizes on the daily lives of the Indian people and through Ajit he describes that being poor does not mean being miserable. The story itself it’s a critical perspective over how people in the high society are never satisfied with what they have and yet people who have much less than them can be happy with the little things in life. It takes the definition of what most humans think of happiness, like a nice car or a big house, and gives it in the simplest, rawest form possible. Happiness is what you make it and Ajit is the perfect example of what Charlie Chaplin meant to say with “A day without laughter is a day wasted.”

"Dead Men's Path" by Chinua Achebe

The story takes place in 1949 in Ndume, which is a rural village in Southeast Nigeria. It describes the lives of a young marriage, with the story revolving around the husband, Michael Obi, as the protagonist of the story. Michael is modern-thinking educator from Nigeria who was given the task to reform the Ndume Central School. He is chosen for this task because of his headstrong attitude and his ways into pushing modern methods with no regard to cultural tradition. These traits toppled with his unwavering pride makes him the perfect target for life’s fortune wheel to take him off his high horse. After they enforce their modern ways into the school and make the surroundings a little more to their liking they discover that the residents of a nearby village uses a footpath that crosses the campus of the school.

Thinking that the Education Officer would give him a bad review after seeing the footpath he decides to close it up, as to not let any more people walk through it. Three days after Michael closed the footpath in his self-righteous way to be “perfect”, a village priest visits him and explains the importance of the footpath. Michael is unmoved by the words of the priest and insists that the path remain closed, because the reason he was assigned as Headmaster of the school was to destroy any ancestral beliefs that dominated the land. Two days after Michael met with the village priest, a resident of the nearby village dies of childbirth and the villagers take it up to them to have revenge on the Headmaster, so they destroy the gardens and even tear down one of the schools buildings. When Michael arrives to the school he is devastated to see what the villagers did to the school and the Education Officer gives Michael a “nasty report” about how Michael could not eradicate the ancestral beliefs of the school and the village.

Michael is in a way the personification of the verse in the bible in Provebs 16:18 “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” He is a man that does not listen to reason and only goes with his instinct, his pride and therefor what makes his life better, not taking into consideration the feelings or cultural beliefs that other people might have. The overall theme of the story is cultural respect and how ignorance can lead to the downfall of even the mightiest of men.

"Looking for a Rain God" by Bessie Head

The short story written by Bessie Head, follows a family of six living in the village of Kgotla, in Africa. The story starts with the family living in the land which is fertile and very rich with all sorts of vegetation, and also the people who live on this land have different sources of water and live in a very prosper manner. Then in 1958 a seven year drought fell upon the land which spirals the turn of events that would lead the youngest of the family Neo and Boseyong to pay the ultimate price. The people from the village are driven to the edge of sanity as their despair and fear for survival turns them to do unspeakable things. The main character of the story Mokgobja, who has passed the point between sanity and madness, recalls a tribal practice (or ritual) from the old times that would be a foolproof way to make the rain, fall once more. So Mokgobja, with his son Ramadi, his sister-in-law Tiro, and Tiro’s sister set out to re-enact the ritual Mokgobja described, blinded with despair, in hopes of making the land prosper again, not knowing that they would be crossing onto a road which there was no return. They kill the two little girls and spread their bodies across the land, but nothing changes. The land is still ablaze with the suns incredible heat. The four remaining family members decide to head back to the village and the villagers notice that something is amiss as the two girls are not back with them. When the police investigate and questions the family the mother of the two children (Tiro), falls into chaos and spills the truth. In the end Ramadi and Mokgobja are found guilty in a trial and sentenced to death for the murder of the two little girls.

This is without a doubt an atrocity if we look at it from the point of view of our society here in the Western world. However being as there is such cultural diversity in the world, some of them find this type of behavior normal because it is their cultural way of life. Nowadays the majority of the religions do not practice human sacrifice in the name of a God. They have gone as far as condemn it, but still other types of human bloodshed are still around in the modern world in the name of a religion, like religious persecution. However in the 1960 Valvidia earthquake, a local “machi” (shaman) of the Mapuche culture, demanded that the grandson of a villager be sacrificed in order to calm the earth and the ocean. They both proceeded to remove the arms and legs of the 5-year-old and stuck him into the sand of the beach as a form of stake. The two men were charged with murder, but were released two years later after a judge overruled that the two men “acted without free will, driven by an irresistible natural force of ancestral tradition.” This account is very similar as the story from Bessie Head and although we may look upon the story with a biased point of view because our morals differ from those in the story. We must first understand that once a human passes the point of madness, the law of the jungles kicks in and they will do anything to survive.