Orion

May 1, 2013

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

This four stanza poem has many examples of assonance and alliteration. For example, the line “two roads diverged yellow wood”, the first line of the poem, has a lot of the ‘O’ sound. Roads, Yellow, and Wood all have that same or close to the same sound. This is an example of assonance. Another example of assonance would be from the line “Yet knowing how way leads on to way,” from the third stanza. The similar sound in this line is the ‘W’ sound. The words Knowing, How, and Way from this line all have the same sound.  There is also a little alliteration and repetition in this poem. An example of alliteration in this people would be from the line “Because it was grassy and wanted wear;” in the second stanza. Alliteration is the repetition of words that have the same first letter (and sound). In this sentence, the alliteration would be with the words Was, Wanted, and Wear. All three words have the W as the first letter. An example of Repetition would be the repeat of the the very first line in the first stanza. Frost puts the same line into the last stanza as a line that tells people that its wrapping up. Except the strange thing is that when he repeated the line, he left out the world yellow, in yellow wood. I wonder why this is.  The rhyme scheme in this poem is ABAAB throughout each stanza, with mostly exact rhymes but one approximate rhyme. This rhyme is between black and back. They almost rhyme, but not quite.