We all deal with our emotions in different ways. Some of us shout them out and some of us bottle them in. Whatever you choose to do is okay, as long as it helps you. Robert Frost chooses to touch on different ways of how he might react in an emotional situation in his three poems: “Mending Wall,” “The Road Not Taken,” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. ” Each poem deals with his emotions whether it is the barrier walls that he keeps between himself and other, the decisions he has to make or the how he chooses to deal with all of these problems.
When I read these three poems, it forced me to think about my own motions and what I would do in each of these situations. We have things that we don’t want others to see. Secrets that we don’t want to share, misfortunes and wrongdoings that we are too ashamed to speak about. These are only a few of the many reasons that we all keep emotional walls or barriers up. They are there for our protection, or so we think. We believe that by keeping people away, they can not hurt us. This is true, but when we push them away, what are we missing? Robert Frost contemplates this exact issue in his poem “Mending Wall. The speaker in this poem doesn’t know for sure whether of not he wants to keep this wall up etween himself and his neighbor. “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. ”
He is worried about what he will miss by keeping the wall up, yet he continues to help his neighbor rebuild it. We all have times like this in our lives. In a perfect world we would like to keep our walls down and let everyone in, but we can’t, because we are still to scared to be able to trust each other. Emotionally, it is much easier to live and not get hurt by keeping people at a certain distance.
You can stop them from coming to close. If you let them past your wall, you’re letting hem into your mind. You’re telling them all your secrets. Telling them about your past. You’re inviting them in. This is wonderful at first, but it leaves you wide open and vulnerable. Unfortunately, this is the way I have chosen to see it. I have been hurt too many times for me to want to let anyone else in. This is not a good way to live your life, but it’s the only way that seems to keep me safe. It’s kind of like climbing a ladder to reach a prize. The higher you climb, the closer to the prize, but you also have a much bigger chance of falling.
The less you climb the less chance of getting hurt. I have climbed this ladder one too many times, and each of them I have fallen off right when I reach the top. This is why I have chosen to keep my wall up; I’m just tired of falling. Making this decision wasn’t easy. In fact, it is almost never easy to make an important decision. You are always stuck wondering what would have happened if you gone the other way. In Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” he wonders at the difference it would have made in his life had he chosen to go down the other path.
This poem is symbolic for every important (and even the not so important) decisions you have had to make. How do ou know if you have made the right decision? Is there even a right decision to make? Is each path of the same importance to your life and you just had to choose one? Will one make you fail? While the other one make you succeed? These are all questions that Frost has brought up in “The Road Not Taken. ” “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both” We have all wanted to walk down both paths, see what lies ahead, but we know that it is impossible to do so.
You can never go back and change your decision. The thing that Frost has learned and that we need to remember is that there are no rong decisions. Each path holds the same weight in how your life will turn out. In “The Road Not Taken,” he has decided that either path or decision is just as good as the other: “Then took the other, just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same. You may choose to go down one road, thinking that it is the “right” road, but years later you could find out that it was probably bad to make that decision. Or you could happen to make the “wrong” decision and find out that it has helped you in the end. I made a choice like this in tenth grade. I chose not to take the suggested math classes in order to take a few more photography and art classes. Everyone, except my parents I, believed that this was a bad decision. “You need math, you don’t need art. ” That’s what everyone said to me.
They all thought I was crazy and that I was sending my life down the drain, but in fact, my decision to go ahead and take those extra art classes has probably saved the rest of my life. By taking those classes in tenth grade I was able to get the skills and credit I needed to be accepted into the Minnesota Center for Arts Education (or Arts High s we like to call it). For my senior year, I was able to go to a school that was primarily focused around the arts. Not only did my decision affect my what highschool I went to, it also effected what college I got into.
From the reputation the Arts High has, I was able to get into RISD. Who knows whether or not I could have gotten in without all the experience I had gained through the simple decision on whether or not to take a math class? As Frost says “Oh, I kept the first for another day! ” so did I. I ended up taking those math classes that I had missed, at the Arts High. But we know that you can’t ever go back, hat the decision will always be different. In my case the decision was different, it was better, because at the Arts High they teach math that is geared around the arts.
When you make an important decision, whether or not things go the way you wanted them to, the consequences can often leave you feeling depressed or confused. We all have ways that we take care of our problems, and one option is to get away from it all and think. This is the way that Robert Frost has chosen to deal with his problems in his poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. ” When Frost says that he is stopping “Between the woods nd frozen lake, The darkest evening of the year,” we get the picture that whatever problems he was dealing with he was not happy about them.
Frost is obviously bothered by something important. “My little horse must think it queer, To stop without a farmhouse near,” shows that he feels the need to go somewhere empty, somewhere alone. “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. ” When he says “But I have promises to keep,” he has chosen either not to admit his problems to anyone else, or maybe he can’t even admit them to imself.
He admits that he has a lot more thinking to do and that he has not come to a conclusion when he states twice “And miles to go before I sleep. He is speaking figuratively here that until he figures out what to do, he will not be able to get any rest. Frost probably does not actually mean sleep when he says rest, but maybe just rest in general like giving his mind a break. Many people have a very hard time thinking about anything else when they are dealing with an important issue and this is where Frost has chosen to end his poem. I do not agree with most people when they say that Robert Frost was writing about suicide with this poem.
He wrote this poem to express his feelings of the need to get away for awhile, to think. This is exactly what I choose to do when I have issues and problems I need to think about. Suicide is definitely not something I have thought about when I want to be alone for awhile. I just need to be away from distractions. Unfortunately, living in the dorms has taken away my privilege to do that. At home, I have always had the advantage of having my own room. No matter what happened, I had the option to go to my room, shut the door, and get away from everything. Now I am not so lucky.
When I have had a bad day, gotten in an argument or just even want to be alone, I have to worry about my roommate being there. This makes it really hard for me to deal with any problems that I might have. Dealing with your emotions is a difficult thing. Each of us has our own ways in which we choose to do so. In his three poems “Mending Wall,” “The Road Not Taken,” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Robert Frost has just started to touch on how he might react in different situations. I have thought about and compared what I might do and what he might do. In many ways