A Journey Through Time

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Literature: A Journey Through Time Tasha Maxon Ashford University Introduction to Literature ENG 125 Julie Pal-Agrawal March 12, 2012 Literature: A Journey Through Time “One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. 'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?' 'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat. 'I don't much care where—' said Alice. 'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.'—so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation. 'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough” (Carroll, 1865, p. 89-90). The book Alice in Wonderland mirrors Robert Frost’s journey that he talks about in his poem “The Road Not Taken.” The inspiration for this text came from repeated trips in the woods of London, with his friend Edward Thomas, who would always wonder what the other road would have offered (The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost (1874-1963), n.d.). So often in life, we wish we could either travel down both roads, or backtrack and choose again. Instead, Frost believes that we should keep our eyes fixed on the road before us, and not worry about the road not taken. Frost’s description of his journey provides the reader to analyze the poem with an archetypal approach. In the first stanza of Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” the speaker describes traveling down a road and coming to a point where it forks. This ethereal journey down the road just happens to be a metaphor for the road of life. The speaker goes on to say that he studied the paths, “And looked down one as far as I could, to where it bent in the undergrowth,” (Clugston, 2010, Chapter 2.2), to see which one would be the better choice. This is an example of Frost examining the difference between the road desirable and the road undesirable. The first road was bent and
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