The Road Not Taken: Key Poetic Devices

Assonance and consonance

Assonance and consonance are sibling concepts. They both refer to the repetition of certain sounds in adjacent or nearby words. Assonance specifically refers to the repetition of vowel sounds, whereas consonance refers to the repetition of consonant sounds. In “The Road Not Taken,” Frost uses both to lend the poem’s language a sense of rhetorical balance and poise. For a good example that showcases the simultaneous use of assonance and consonance, examine the third stanza (lines 11–15). First, consider the O sounds that repeat across the stanza:

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.

At least two O sounds appear in every line, which gives the entire passage a sonic baseline grounded in this vowel. By contrast, Frost distributes consonants in more densely clustered groups. Here’s the same passage again, this time with the L and W sounds highlighted:

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.

Note how at the beginning of the stanza, L sounds predominate, though with one instance of a W sound (in “equally”). Later, the opposite patter occurs: W sounds predominate, though with one instance of an L sound (in “leads”). The careful rhetorical balance struck through assonance in consonance stands in ironic contrast to the speaker’s reflection on the challenge of making well and truly balanced decisions.

Extended metaphor

An extended metaphor functions in the same way as an ordinary metaphor, but it differs in the amount of space devoted to its development. Whereas an ordinary metaphor may be mentioned in passing, an extended metaphor unfolds over the course of many lines. In “The Road Not Taken,” Frost uses the conceit of a forked path in a forest as an extended metaphor for any moment that requires us to make a decision, and especially a major decision. It is, of course, entirely possible to read the poem at face value. That is, it’s valid to understand the diverging paths in precisely the terms that Frosts uses to describe them. However, the poem gains a great deal from interpreting the forked path in the woods as an extended metaphor for decision-making more generally. Such an interpretation is more open-ended, and it allows us readers to see the speaker as a version of ourselves. The speaker grapples with the challenge of how to decide between two very similar-looking options, which is something we do every day of our lives. We never truly know how our decisions will turn out, and we can only judge their relative rightness with the benefit of hindsight.

Repetition

Frost uses several types of repetition in this poem. The first type of repetition is known as diacope (dahy-ACK-uh-pee), which occurs when a single word is repeated with other words appearing in between. Frost uses this technique to fashion rhetorically powerful phrases such as “way leads on to way” (line 14) and “ages and ages hence” (line 17). Frost also uses a form of repetition known as anaphora (ann-AF-uh-rah), which involves the repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses. As an example, consider the opening stanza (lines 1–5):

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

Note how the stanza’s middle three lines all begin with “And.” This form of repetition helps maintain the verse’s sense of rhythmic flow, enabling one line to lead smoothly into the next without stopping. Finally, Frost uses repetition for a thematic purpose when, in the last stanza, he repeats the poem’s opening line: “Two roads diverged in a wood” (line 18). Here, the speaker is talking about how they’ll likely revise the experience they’re describing in the poem when they remember it in the future. And that’s precisely what they do here: they repeat the opening line with a slight modification, dropping the adjective “yellow.”

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