Saturday, October 23, 2010

How would we characterise the style in "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost?

When we think of the style of a given work of literature,
the word "style" is an umbrella-like term, referring to a number of different
characteristics, including word choice, level of vocabulary, figurative langauge and
poetic devices. Considering this excellent poem by Frost, therefore, we can say that the
word choice or diction is very simple. It is a poem that does not attempt to use
sophisticated vocabulary and is simple to understand. Frost seems to be deliberately
writing in a style to ensure the accessibility of his work to all. When we think of
poetic devices, it is clear that Frost has used poetic devices such as allliteration and
assonance to make the poem flow smoothly as a result of these devices. Consider the
alliteration in "Equally lay / In leaves" and then the assonance of the vowel sounds in
words such as "roads," "yellow," "would," "could," "stood" and "looked." Clearly Frost
has worked hard to create a flowing rhythm that is not noticeably artificial. Thus, when
we think of this poem, we can characterise its style as being simple and not
artificial.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Calculate tan(x-y), if sin x=1/2 and sin y=1/3. 0

We'll write the formula of the tangent of difference of 2 angles. tan (x-y) = (tan x - tan y)/(1 + tan x*tan y) ...