Compare and contrast the themes and structure of "Journey" and "The Road Not Taken."

Both poems
involve taking a journey on a road. In Frost's poem, "The Road Not Taken," the
narrator, traveling through the woods, reaches a place where the road forks into two different
directions. He has to make a decision and go one way or the other. He chooses the road less
traveled and says that has made "all the difference."

Likewise, in
Oliver's "Journey," the speaker must make a decision about which way to go: staying
home and "mending" her ways to become a conformist doing what others say is right, or
following her own heart and going out on the road. She, like Frost's narrator, chooses to reject
conformity. As in Frost's poem, the road becomes afor the journey we take in life as we make
decisions to go one way or another: in Oliver's case, the road is "full of fallen branches
and stones." This suggests that like Frost's road, it is less traveled than other paths
through life.

Oliver's speaker, however, is more intentional about her life
choices, whereas Frost's simply...