I`m working on the thematic structure inRobert Frost`"The Road not Taken" . Can you please help me?

Answer 1

Thematic structure
Thematic structure is a term in linguistics. When people talk, there are purposes in three separable parts of utterances—Speech Act, Propositional Content and Thematic Structure. Because speaking is cooperative, in order that the speaking can be effective in the conversation, speakers have to pay attention to their listeners’ knowledge, mental activities and so on. Speakers can assume that listeners know or do not know what speakers talking about.
According to Halliday, the speakers’ judgments about the listeners’ current mental states are reflected in what is called thematic structure. Thematic structure has three main functions:
To convey given information and new information
Subject and predicate
Frame and insert

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

If we couple such tradition-bound thematic structure with Frost's more or less conventional handling of metric, stanzaic form and rhyme scheme, then we have reason enough for Ellery Sedgwick's acceptance of this poem for the Atlantic: no "caviar to the crowd" here.

And yet Frost has played a subtle game in an effort to have it both ways. In order to satisfy the Atlantic and its readers, he hews closely to the requirements of popular genre writing and its mode of poetic production, the mass circulation magazine. But at the same time he has more than a little undermined what that mode facilitates in the realm of American poetic and political ideals. There must be two roads and they must, of course, be different if the choice of one over the other is to make a rational difference ("And that has made all the difference"). But the key fact, that on the particular morning when the choice was made the two roads looked "about the same," makes it difficult to understand how the choice could be rationally grounded on (the poem's key word) perceptible, objective "difference." The allegorical "way" has been chosen, a self has been forever made, but not because a text has been "read" and the "way" of nonconformity courageously, ruggedly chosen. The fact is, there is no text to be read, because reading requires a differentiation of signs, and on that morning clear signifying differences were obliterated. Frost's delivery of this unpleasant news has long been difficult for his readers to hear because he cunningly throws it away in a syntax of subordination that drifts out of thematic focus. The unpleasant news is hard to hear, in addition, because Fireside form demands, and therefore creates the expectation of, readable textual differences in the book of nature. Frost's heavy investment in traditional structure virtually assures that Fireside literary form will override and cover its mischievous handling in this poem.

"The Road Not Taken, written by Robert Frost in 1916, examines journeys in a different light. It is important to examine The Road Not Taken in the context of political liberalism, and more importantly the political context of the times; Frost, a noted liberal thinker, wrote The Road Not Taken during the so-called Progressive Era, where individual thought and social liberalism gained impetus under the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Tyler Hoffman argues that Frost’s poetic practice is ‘fundamentally progressivist’. In this context, the protagonist’s journey can be read as a triumph of individualism; in making his choice of path without consideration for which road was more taken, the protagonist is validating the concept of the journey as an effort of individual will and self-realisation, without the constraints of community pressure. The poem is low on modality, suggesting that it represents not a single journey, but rather an idealised metaphorical conception of journeys throughout life; the protagonist states, ‘I took the road less travelled by, and that has made all the difference’, but the negative connotations of ‘sigh’ imply that this difference may have been a negative one. In this sense, The Road Not Taken can be interpreted as a rebuke of liberalism, in that taking the road less travelled by, and thus giving in to one’s individualism, leads to one recounting the tale with a ‘sigh’. However, this does not detract from the poem’s essential message upholding human liberty; one cannot ‘travel both’ paths, but must make a choice. It is this emphasis on choice that serves as the poem’s central theme. Through this, it can be said that the poem emphasizes the importance of journeys in a liberal sense, in that they serve as means by which humans may exercise freedom and individuality, and thus develop as individuals."