Robert Frost, born in 1874, can be considered one of America's leading 20th century poets. Throughout his life he wrote many poems that are well known today. Most of Robert Frost's poems are deceptively simple on the surface, but actually have tremendous depth and meaning. Two of these poems are "The Road Not Taken", written in 1915, and "After Apple Picking", written in 1914. They both have many similarities, and both are about the choices people make in everyday life.
On the surface Frost's poem "After Apple Picking" seems to be about a man picking apples, but it is actually about a man looking at his own life, and all the choices he has made. When he says, "there may be two or three apples I didn't pick upon some bough", he could be talking about something he has missed out on in life, or some experience that he has passed by.
Robert Frost, American poet
English: The stone covering Robert Frost's family ...
Robert Frost, Dartmouth 1896.He is considering how his life has been lived fully, but he still has some regrets and mistakes, or apples he "didn't pick". The barrel that he did not fill could represent a life that is not quite complete, but that is not really missing anything either. The "Magnified apples" that "appear and disappear" can be symbolic of the opportunities, big or small, that are always coming and going.
"The Road Not Taken" is also a poem about choices and decisions. It is a first person narrative story about a significant moment in a person's life. This poem shows how making one simple decision can have a tremendous effect on a person's life. The two roads represent the options the man has to choose from. The poem says both roads diverge in a "yellow wood" and at first they both look to be "about...