Both poems concern life's choices. Yet, Kipling and Frost
demonstrate very different approaches to this topic. Kipling's speaker is clearly a
father addressing his son, and giving advice on how to live his life. He cautions his
son to maintain his integrity in the midst of the world's evils, its vicissitudes in
fortune, and the fickleness of public opinion. He is encouraging his son to choose his
responses wisely, cautiously, and nobly.
Frost's speaker is
much more subtle, much more ironic. His poem is about choices too, but unlike Kipling's
father, Frost's speaker does not indicate a preferred choice of action. His speaker
comes across a fork in the road. He can take either path because they are about equally
worn and equally fair. There is no way of knowing which path is the better one to take,
and also no way of knowing even in retrospect which would have been the better choice.
He only knows that his choice made a difference--he does not know what kind of
difference his choice made. His sigh at the end of the poem could be one of contentment
or regret. Frost ends the poem in ambiguity. The speaker's claim at the end that he
took the road less travelled by is unsubstantiated by the actual description of the
choice presented earlier in the poem, in which the speaker declares three times that the
paths were equal. So, the reader must conclude that the speaker "ages and ages hence"
is misrepresenting the choice he made, that his boast that he took the "less traveled
road" is a vain one.
Technically, both poets use an
alternating rhyme scheme and four stanzas. Both poets begin lines with a repeating
word: Kipling uses "if" while Frost uses "and."
However,
Kipling's poem is inspirational; Frost's poem is realistic.
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