Structural Feature Comparison Between a Poem and an Autobiography

The remainder of a young man’s entire life rests on a single decision. This man doesn’t know what road in life would be the best for his future. The autobiography “Kaffir Boy” and the poem “The road not taken” both show a common theme “Our life is defined by our decisions.” The poem and the autobiography, however, show this common them through different structural features. The poems lines are compact and emotional unlike the autobiography’s sentences which go into detail and have less emotion.
     Poems have short, compact lines whereas autobiographies have written out, detailed sentences. These structural feature differences don’t stop them from sharing a common theme. The sentence in the autobiography “I chose to fight on my mother’s side, and thus my destiny was forever altered.” compares  to the poem’s line “And that has made all the difference.” in that they both show that the decision they made has “made all the difference” in the life of both the character from the autobiography and the character from the poem. Neither of them know what things would be like now if they had made a different decision at that point in their life. The sentence is more written out and detailed than the line, but they both show that their decisions are defining their lives. The line “And sorry I could not travel both” is similar to the sentence “But the thought of the strange woman’s lamentations over her dead son presented somewhat a strong case for going to school.” They both show that the character is torn between two paths in their life, but they must choose only one. They must choose wisely because the choice they make will help define the rest of their entire life. Again the line is more compact as it shows part of the same theme but it shows it in only seven words, as opposed the autobiography’s 21 word sentence. The line “And be one traveler, long I stood” shows the character taking his time to make a decision that will affect the rest of his life. The sentences “I didn’t want to go to school for three reasons.” and “But later that evening something forced me to go to school.” Show that this character is also taking his time to debate what life defining decision to make. The sentences are still longer and more detailed than the lines but also still show the same theme.
    Autobiographies have sentences that have little emotion when compared to a poem’s emotion-filled lines. The line “In leaves no step had trodden black.” relates to the autobiography’s sentence “Use those canes on me?” in that they show that that has never been done before. The line is like saying no one walked there, but it uses more emotion filled words such as “trodden” [past participle of tread] It also uses the word black which isn’t much on its own but seems to darken the mood when used in certain combinations with other words. That is how it is emotional. These examples also show part of the choice the characters must make to define their lives. The boy in the autobiography cannot choose both to go to school and to not go to school. Similarly, the poem character cannot take both roads at once. Neither of them can be in two places at once, therefore they must make a choice in life. The autobiography sentence “When my mother began dropping hints that I would soon be going to school, I vowed never to go because school was a waste of time.” and the poem’s line “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” are similar in that they are both introducing the choice that will define the life of the character. Yet they are different in that the line does it on an emotional level. The line uses words such as “diverged” and “a yellow wood” diverged, in this context, means split apart. A yellow wood could merely mean the roads are unpredictable as the color yellow is between red, which often symbolizes something bad, and green, which usually symbolizes something good. The sentence, on the other hand, just spells it out directly with words of little emotion. The same line “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” could be written as a sentence for the autobiography and it might go something like this: I found myself with a choice split into two options, but I could not see which one would have the brighter future. This sentence has less emotion but still shows the character making a life defining choice.
     Structural features in poems are unlike those of autobiographies, but no matter the difference, they can show a same common theme. The structural features are different, and they build up the theme differently, but they can still end up with the same theme. For example, a poem could illustrate the same theme as an autobiography. The poem would have more compact, emotion-filled structural features whereas the autobiography would have a longer, more detailed and less emotional structure.