CRITICAL COMPARISON

“The Road Not Taken” and “A Worn Path”



“The Road Not Taken” and “A Worn Path”

Introduction

Robert Frost and Eudora Welty are two of the most renowned names in the American literature. Whilst Frost is considered a legend amongst the American poets, Welty is known for her classical short story writing. Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" has been included in several poetry texts with comments and notes that seem to imply mistaken interpretations (Jay and Frost, 1999). For example, Laurence Perrine, including the poem in his Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry, states that "the general meaning of the poem is an expression of regret that the possibilities of life-experience are so sharply limited. The person with a craving for life, however, satisfied with his own choice, will always long for the realms of experience that had to be passed by" (Nixon, 2003). On the other hand, Welty's "A Worn Path" has been a sweeping success throughout the years. The story reflects the importance of fulfilling one's duties and responsibilities and never giving up in the face of hardships and difficulties. Whilst the forms of the two works are different, both reflect a common outlook of purpose that seeks to inspire the readers in their lives.

This paper is aimed at drawing a comparison between Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and Welty's “A Worn Path”. The discussion sketches a contrast between the works of the two writers and their selected mediums and approaches towards the expressed ideas.

Discussion

Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and Welty's “A Worn Path” follow two distinct styles that are quite different from each other. Whilst the poem is written in the first person, “A Worn Path” is narrated in the third person.

The complexity of the attack in "The Road Not Taken" depends upon paying careful heed to the three distinct ages of the persona in the poem and realizing that late in his life the speaker faces again a choice between a more- and a less-traveled road (Finger, 1978).

Readers of "The Road Not Taken" have been warned by Frost himself against cursory readings; he stated that the poem is "very tricky" and that its subtle mockery contains a "hit”.

The poem presents three distinct ages of the persona. To attribute the sorrows, claims, and choices of the three-aged self to just one self leads to mistaken notions about the poem and to a failure to understand the complexity of a poem that presents a middle-aged self mocking less-objective versions of himself as a younger and an older man (Fleissner and Frost, 1996).

The first three stanzas of the poem present the differences between the younger self and the poem's speaker, i.e. the middle-aged self. It is this middle-aged self, not the younger self, who admits to and purposely stresses the similarity of the two roads. The younger self is perhaps too dismayed with or too "sorry" about the nature of choice to notice. These observations about the roads' similarities come to us from the middle-aged self's corrective, truth-seeking voice ...