Question

I learned a poem called "The Road not Taken." Can you find alliteration, rhyme and rhythm? What is the perspective of this poem?

Answer 1

Hint:
i) Alliteration - It’s a figure of speech that is used to denote a repetitive sound in a group of words. For e.g. She sails the seashells on the seashore. In this sentence the sound of ‘s’ is alliteration.
ii) Rhyme - It is a literary device that tells about the repetition of similar sounds in lyrical compositions such as songs and poems. E.g. Well, bell, tell, shall, fell.
iii) Rhythm - It is the pace of the poem which results from the stress on syllables. When stressed syllables are followed by unstressed syllables then they form a rhythm.

Complete answer:
Alliteration in the poem is as follows- wanted wear is the alliteration in the poem. ‘Then took the’, ‘first for’ such phrases are also given in the poem which begins with the same syllable. However, just to make a phrase alliteration we can’t include words that are prepositions, pronouns or conjunction etc.

The rhyme in the poem is as follows - The poem is divided into four paragraphs. In the first paragraph we have ‘wood, stood, could’ and ‘both, undergrowth’; in the second paragraph we have ‘fair, wear, there’ and ‘claim, same’; the third paragraph we have ‘lay, day, way’ and,’ back, black’; and in the fourth paragraph we have ‘sigh, I, by’ and ‘hence, difference’.The rhythmic pattern is usually found in the end words of the given lines/phrases. The rhythmic pattern followed in the poem is ‘a b a a b’.

The poem is given in iambic tetra-meter i.e. having two unstressed syllables and two stressed syllables. E.g.Two ROADS di-VERG'D in a YEL-low WOOD.

The perspective of the poem is the point of view of the poet. The poet throughout the poem, tells about the direction that he did not choose and what difference did it make in his life. He uses ‘I’ to make it clear that it’s written in the first person. The poet is a traveller who comes across two paths on his journey. Both the paths lead to two different places and one of those paths was chosen by most of the travellers. The poem is about his deep contemplation over the choice of path that he has to make.

Note: “The road not taken” is a famous poem written by Robert Frost whose theme is about ‘making choices’. It also says that we must choose wisely so that we do not have to regret our decisions.