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Posted by Bruce on April 05, 19100 at 07:37:15:
In Reply to: Angsty Girl throws tantrum posted by Jane on March 28, 19100 at 12:05:32:
The key to understanding “The Road not Taken” is the fact that the wood is “yellow”. What a strange colour for a wood!? Is Frost implying that the wood is jaundiced? Perhaps travelers avoided the fork which “was gry and wanted wear” because it was a diseased, jaundiced wood, redolent of moist, rotting leaves.
Maybe, however, the “yellowness” of the wood implies urine, as if the wood, or, perhaps, the poem itself is contaminated with the poison laden expectoration of the poet’s body. The subconscious mind (Freud said) is in love with the body’s offal, and the schizophrenia of the poet is symbolized by his desire to “travel both and be one traveler.”
Why does the poet sigh? Does he fancy that he will regret the choice of the road less traveled? Or is his unrealized schizophrenic desire to trample the untrodden leaves of BOTH roads a matter of deep regret to him? Was he, perhaps, the type of poet who, as a young child, jumped in leaf piles just to scatter the labor of his neighbors in all directions?
Such anti-social behavior as preferring the road less traveled is sick, jaundiced, and poisoned, Frost implies. The poet’s “sigh” is, of course, best seen as a death rattle.