The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost - Analysis

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as 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,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

anaphora

end of sentences

punctuation different from commas

        In "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, it is told by a narrator in first person. Frost uses anaphora at the beginning of his poem. This emphasizes the finding of the two separate roads. It not only creates focus on the main point of the poem, the two roads is an allusion to the idiom "at a crossroads".  

       The whole poem is made up of only four sentences, and two of them are short. Those two are "Oh, I kept the first for another day!" and "I doubted if I should ever come back.". The two sentences are very important, because they show the narrator's struggle with making a decision to go somewhere in his life. He shows resolve at first by deciding on the second path, but then reflects and worries about whether he should come back. You can never tell if the decision you made was the right one until after you make it, and that holds true for the narrator too.

       The different punctuation serves as pauses throughout the poem, and puts emphasis on the words after the punctuation. In the two times Frost uses a semicolon instead of a comma, he puts emphasis on the path that is all overgrown because people don't use it. He shows that it is the harder path to travel because it is not clear-cut like the other path. When he uses a colon, Frost again emphasizes the two roads, and emphasizes his decision by using a hyphen to say "I---I" to bring attention to himself. 

       "The Road Not Taken" is a poem about how the path to self-success is not always the easier one. You sometimes have to take the harder path, the one not taken by most, to achieve your goals. And in Frost's own words, "that has made all the difference".

Death Is Nothing By Henry Scott-Holland - Analysis

Death is nothing at all. 
It does not count. 
I have only slipped away into the next room. 
Nothing has happened. 

Everything remains exactly as it was. 
I am I, and you are you, 
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. 
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. 

Call me by the old familiar name. 
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. 
Put no difference into your tone. 
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. 

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. 
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. 
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. 

Life means all that it ever meant. 
It is the same as it ever was. 
There is absolute and unbroken continuity. 
What is this death but a negligible accident? 

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? 
I am but waiting for you, for an interval, 
somewhere very near, 
just round the corner. 

All is well. 
Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. 
One brief moment and all will be as it was before. 
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

Parallelism
Allusion

   In "Death Is Nothing" by Henry Scott-Holland, the author mainly uses parallelism to console and comfort a grieving friend or family member. The poem is narrated from the perspective of the deceased person, giving the poem an unusual point of view. 
  The narrator asks the friend in mourning to speak of him normally, without sorrow. He says that nothing has changed, as "I am I, and you are you." He also says "Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost." The narrator further tries to comfort his friend by telling him to smile and think of him. 
  The use of parallelism adds to the poetic syntax and conveys a heartwarming message of sorts. The ghostly narrator claims that death is not the end, he has simply gone away to another place. He says that he will be waiting faithfully for his friend, "just around the corner" in his words. Then when they are together again, they can resume where they left off. 
   Although parallelism was the most common rhetorical device found, there was a small allusion towards the end of the poem. The narrator says "Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?" alluding to the old proverb "out of sight, out of mind." While readers may have gotten an "aha!" moment when they figured it out, it is not only there as an allusion. The proverb means that we will soon forget about something if we no longer see it. This ties into the ghost's wishes to not be forgotten by his friend, so he repeatedly asks to be remembered by saying that nothing has changed, and nothing should change. 

The Mask by Charlene Valladares - Analysis

I look in the mirror at the beginning of each day, and ask myself what mask should I place on my face today.

No not the sad one it's too revealing, I don't want to show the world my true feelings.

For the mask that you can see camouflages the true me. 
It's my public face that I remove each night, when I bare my soul the mirrors light.

It's the one meant for only my eyes to see it speaks of all my history.

It tells of my youth and girlish ways, my adolescents and my young womans dreams.

It tells of good times of which I had my share of love lost and pain so hard to bear.

So I choose my mask so carefully, to cover the face that was given to me, the one that was meant for only my eyes to see.

anaphora
metaphor


   The poem "The Mask" by Charlene Valladares uses anaphora and metaphors to represent a sad girl using a fake smile to hide her true feelings from the world. The "masks" she puts on are fake expressions, fake attitudes to convince everyone around her that she isn't suffering. In the third line, she doesn't want to put on her sad mask because she says "it's too revealing, I don't want to show the world my true feelings." She also says that the "mask that you can see camouflages the true me", meaning she hides her actual self from her friends and family. 
   The repeated use of the word "it" at the beginning of three lines emphasizes what the mask does for her, and how it hides her emotions from the people around her. She says that the mask is only meant for herself to see, which explicitly states that she is trying to fool everyone into looking at her mask, rather than her actual self. 
   When combined, the result displays a girl who is clearly suffering, but doesn't want to worry those around her, so she puts on a mask to hide the truth. She wants to hide her feelings from people, the ones that only she can see.