Symbol Analysis
Chances are, if there's one thing you know about Robert Frost, it's that he wrote "The Road Not Taken." So yeah, dude had a thing for roads.
But this road isn't exactly AAA-approved. And this poem is certainly not going to be read at your high school graduation. This ain't the cliché road to success. We're not relying on stock and standard metaphors in this one. Here, Frost's road is all about getting lost.
- Lines 8-10: It seems like this road is an actual road, but it's also a metaphor. For what, exactly? Well, for getting lost. The speaker compares it to a quarry, too, to remind us that this journey is rocky and treacherous at times.
- Lines 29-32: Not only is this the road you'll take to go back to where the old house and farm and town were, but you're asked to create a song and an image of how this road was once a worker's way home. The road is an avenue for imagination, too. And it's been around a long time.
- Lines 37-38: Things get a little surreal when the road becomes a ladder and you're asked to pull it up behind you so you can't be followed. See, the road is a public place, but this poem just became very, very private. Sure, we used the road to get this far, but there's a little bit of off-roading (read: getting really lost) that we'll have to do before we can arrive at our final destination.