Question

1.What particular connotations of the word “yellow” is Frost using in the phrase “in a yellow wood”? Why does he write this way rather than just writing out a description of the woods?

2.The first 3 stanzas of the poem describe the author’s walk in the woods while the last abruptly shifts to describing the story that he will tell other people about that walk. Why doesn’t Frost make that change clearer? In other words, why doesn’t he make it clearer to us that now we’re actually hearing someone’s “story” about what happened?
3.Who is Frost not being honest with in the last stanza of the poem, and why is he not being completely honest? In other words, what is Frost telling us about ourselves?

Answer 1

This question is about the poem "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

1. The word "yellow" was used at the beginning of the poem to characterize the environment in which the speaker is located. In stating that the forest was yellow (instead of adopting adjectives that characterize the forest), the speaker shows how the environment, where two paths were placed for him to choose, was uniform and stable, pleasant.

2. Frost does not make this change any clearer, because he wishes that during the reading of the first three stanzas, the reader recognizes himself within the speaker that he needs to make a choice at the present time, now, making the poem more thought-provoking and exciting, than revealing that the choice has already happened. This happens, because before we know that the poem portrays a memory of the speaker, we have unpredictability as an influential point in reading.

3. Frost is not being honest with the reader, because he does not reveal whether his choice was pleasurable, or whether he took him to dark places that promote discomfort. With that, he is maintaining unpredictability and showing that we will never be sure if the result of our choices was positive.