What is the literary devices used in the poem road not taken?
Answers
The device most commonly missed, or misunderstood, in "The Road Not Taken" is the use of verbal irony in the last line -- "And that has made all the difference."
Because it didn't, and hasn't, made any difference at all.
The two roads are described as essentially identical -- "really about the same" -- yet the narrator is described as saying " I shall be telling this with a sigh... I—I took the one less traveled by." Which we know is false -- the road that the narrator took was NOT the one less traveled by. It's something the narrator issaying, years from that moment, to justify the choice ex post to some unseen listener. The actual meaning is the opposite -- that choice "made no difference at all."
Frost also deploys verbal irony to excellent effect in "Mending Wall." The last line is often quoted completely out of context (EXACTLY like the last line of "The Road Not Taken") -- 'He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."'
So people say this all the time -- but Frost has put these words into the mouth of the neighbor, whom the narrator (and thus the reader by extension) thinks to be a fool. Instead, Frost-as-narrator says
'...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 offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.'
And it is this point of view, this statement, that makes the point of the poem -- the last line about "good neighbors" is intended as verbal irony, a false statement that we know to be false based on the preceding lines. Frost's entire point is that walls imprison, walls define, walls create offence -- "good fences do NOT make good neighbors."
And just FYI, the word "wanted" in "wanted wear" in line 8 does NOT mean "desired" and it is not an example of personification. If you use that in your term paper your teacher will know you copied it off the internet.
"Wanted" in this phrase means "lacked" -- it "lacked wear" -- it's an archaic (poetic) meaning but you can find it in any dictionary -- 'lack or be short of something desirable or essential. "you shall want for nothing while you are with me" '