John T. Frost's 'The Road Not Taken'

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Although critics tend to agree about the thematic concerns of "The Road Not Taken," they are less consistent in evaluating its success. John T. Ogilvie, in an article published in South Atlantic Quarterly, suggests that the road is a metaphor for the writerly life, and that the choice the speaker makes here "leads deeper into the wood" which "though they [the woods] hold a salutary privacy, impose a stern isolation, an isolation endured not without cost." Roy Harvey Pearce, in his The Continuity of American Poetry, agrees that this poem illustrates Frost's tendency to write about "moments of pure, unmediated realization" which are "by definition private." The speaker is able to achieve insight, but only through solitude and separation from
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