Authenticity and the Representation of Adolescence through
Literary Adaptation - Case Study: The Road Not Taken
Damian Fasolo
Now we all have a great need for acceptance, but you must
trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others
may think them odd or unpopular, even though the herd may go,
‘that's bad.’ Robert Frost said, ‘Two roads diverged in the wood
and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the
difference.’
John Keating, Dead Poets Society1
Dead Poets Society is more than a reflection of poetry as a purist form of
literature embedded in secondary curriculum. John Keating’s character as the
unconventional, flamboyant English teacher embodies the idealistic view that
literature and life are inexplicably linked, that poetry is a signpost for an
adolescent’s quest for meaning, and also for the articulation and representation of
their true self. For Steinbergh the analysis of poetic texts as part of secondary
curriculum gives students control over the language, allowing them to read for both
meaning and literary technique, and furthermore it offers students a way of
articulating more abstract ideas and relationships.2 The multiplicity of such
articulations is compounded when one seeks to adapt the text to the medium of film
and to personify an adolescent’s reading of the poem as a portrayal and reflection of
their own experiences. This is a case study of the author’s production, The Road
Not Taken - a short film that centers on a teenager’s experience of domestic
violence and its consequences.3 The film is an adaptation of Frost’s widely
examined poem of the same name, incorporated in the form of a first person voiceover narration.4
In some respects, the basis of this work is not dissimilar to the manner in which
poetry serves as both a theme and narrative device in Dead Poets Society, and other
films that use poetic texts as a foundation for representation.5 Through key points of
differentiation - and by investigating the significance and implications of working
with renowned literature, issues of authenticity in adapting from poetic text to
filmic medium, and the implementation of stylistic techniques in the production
process – the paper will demonstrate how notions of ambiguity that pervade Frost’s
poem carry through to the film’s plot, character and themes. Furthermore the
examination will reveal how the unique narrative mode presented in the film
challenges prevalent social discourses of adolescents as both self-centered and poor
communicators of language.
1.
Adaptation of works of art
The decision to adapt Frost’s poem is by no means arbitrary. The Road Not
Taken is considered Frost’s most famous poem.6 The poem, often studied by
adolescents in secondary school curriculum, captures the fundamental notion of life
as a journey, and the roads taken as responses to decisions made along the way. The
overarching significance of Frost’s poem in literature and its impact on adolescents
who are subjected to its analysis cannot be underestimated – it is the most quoted of
Frost’s poems and Frost is America’s eminent poet. In the same way the Mona Lisa
demands a greater attention of its audience, or any other famous work of art for that
matter, so too Frost’s poem forces the adolescent reader to pay particular attention
to the text – as if it were a crucial signpost in their learning and journey. Mills
suggests that the fundamental goal of educating students through renowned art is to
assist them ‘in connecting works of art to their lives through knowledge of the past
and present.’7 This recognition encourages multi-dimensional analysis, and a sense
of collectivity –meshing the work’s cultural and historical context with the reader’s
personal experience and knowledge.
It is precisely this level of analysis resulting from the interaction between
educator, text and reader that is the essence of the film. Adaptation then seems a
loose term here, as it is generally defined by the transference of story elements from
one art form to another.8 The film does not merely take on the narrative, characters
and locales of the text – as most screenplays do – and it cannot. Frost’s poem uses
predominately figurative and metaphorical language, any physical connections to
the real world (for example, yellow wood, roads, morning, leaves) are scarce and
even these can be viewed in a metaphorical context. As Frost himself states when
discussing the symbolic nature of his work, ‘poetry…is metaphor, saying one thing
and meaning another, saying one thing in terms of another.’9 This suggests that the
basis for his metaphor is not simply comparative, but often ironic. The title of the
poem itself supports this diametric; ‘the road not taken’ can be perceived as a
regretful or a heroic choice. In a similar manner the film’s conclusion adopts Frost’s
open-ended position – there is an ambiguity as to whether the protagonist is content
or remorseful of her decisions, and this divides audience perception of her.
.
2.
Translation and issues in authenticity
In preparation for the film (pre-production storyboarding and scripting) the
filmmaker translated Frost’s physical references on screen in an attempt to more
authentically capture his work. For example, when the line ‘And both that morning
equally lay, in leaves no step had trodden black’ arrives on screen the audience sees
the protagonist exit her house in the morning light, crossing a path ridden with
leaves. The action itself of the walking along a path of leaves is an augmentation, as
Frost provides no unfolding storyline. Apart from stating that there are two roads,
and one is chosen by a traveler, the poem does not hint at any other specific action
(the basis of a screenplay is action and dialogue).
What the poem does offer is internal monologue, the inner thought processes of
the traveler – of which can be cinematically adapted in a multitude of ways –from
character gestures, to sounds, to action.10 For example, the line, ‘To where it bent in
the undergrowth’ is accompanied by an action in the car in which the husband hits
his wife. The line is interpreted as a vital turning point for the protagonist, ‘where it
all went wrong’. Similarly, later on in the film the line, ‘Yet knowing how way
leads onto way’ reveals a scene in which the protagonist is again subjected to a
domestic quarrel while outside the front of her house. To denote the sense of way
leading onto way, of nothing new under the sun, the film suggests through repeated
occurrences that the domestic violence continues regardless of the protagonist’s
efforts to shield herself and sister. In this scene, the parents are not shown fighting
as they are inside the house and outside of view - the quarrel is revealed through the
film’s soundtrack as muffled yelling sounds. In not showing the parents, the
significance of the protagonist, the traveler, as the text’s sole voice and character is
reinforced, and her reactionary gesture from smile to shock and sadness is brought
to the fore.
When examining the translation of metaphor and internal monologue into
cinematic language, one might conclude that the processes and selections involved
are ‘unfaithful’ or even reductive in respect to the original text.11 By attaching
physical objects, actions and locales, does the film limit the possibilities of varied
interpretation offered by the original? According to Whittock, ‘The existential link
with a preexistent world outside the film is…a mark of cinema that written accounts
lack.’12 The pairing of the ‘I’ in the poem to the character of the teenage girl, and the
‘roads’ to the decisions she faces in relation to the domestic violence surrounding
her are certainly deliberate and offer a singular account of one’s reading of the
poem; yet the poem’s overarching theme of a figurative inner journey in which
humankind has to learn to take decisions remains intact in the translation. 13 As
MacDonald argues, there is a shared goal of both poet and filmmaker – ‘filmmaker
poets, like literary poets, are creators of suggestive, complex visual images.’14 The
term ‘suggestive’ is of key significance here as it denotes both mediums shared
abilities to present thoughts and emotions to an actively engaged, interpretive
audience. For example, in the film the line ‘I doubted if I should ever come back’ is
accompanied by a shot of the protagonist disappearing like a ghost down an empty
road. The action of her ghostly vanishing suggests the same ambiguity of
interpretation as the doubt expressed by the line – yes she leaves her house, but is
this a metaphorical parting (since paranormal) or a literal parting? Is it an
occurrence, a thought, or a dream? And finally, how does the audience situate
themselves in respect to the protagonist? In this way, one can argue the translation
does not dilute the original, nor does it strip it off its essence or authenticity.15
3.
Narration and adolescence
As previously mentioned, there are a number of films that employ poetic texts in
a narrative function. In Awakenings, a Parkinson’s disease patient uses German poet
Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Panther to powerfully communicate his suffering and
catatonic state.16 Like the author’s film, the poem is incorporated in the form of a
voice-over, and the characters of the panther and the Parkinson’s patient are
allegorically linked in a montage sequence that crosscuts between footage of a
panther in a cage at the zoo and the patient comatose in his wheelchair.
In Awakenings and Dead Poets Society poetry serves as a footprint in a much
larger narrative - in the author’s film, the poem dominates its entirety and its
delivery is unabridged. This has vast implications; Frost’s poem is not merely
quoted or paraphrased, it is fully present as the principal narrator personified in the
form of the adolescent girl. According to Browne, filmic narration is an analysis of
‘the function and power of the agency, or subject, that enunciates the narrative, that
presents the discourse.’17 It can be argued then that it is Frost’s discourse of a
decision making journey that serves as a foundation for the thematic motifs of the
film. Browne goes on to say,
The “narrator,” we may suppose, exhibits the images of the
film and by control of the camera position, mise-en-scène,
editing, and sound, positions the spectator in a certain relation to
the depicted world. He constructs too, through the use of the
character as a medium of communication, views of the world of
the story.18
This suggests that the narration of the film occupies an unusual space – part
poet and part filmmaker – and the point of intersection being the adolescent
protagonist. She is the medium; though her voice is her own, her words are Frost’s,
though her gaze is purported to be her own, it is a construct of the filmmaker’s
view.
However, this address, or mode of ‘representation’, which comes from narrator
to audience can be differentiated from the function of narration purely at a story
level. At this level, one can acknowledge the significance of the ‘presentation’ of
the adolescent’s world independent of the film’s design. As the film’s classroom
flashback sequence suggests, the protagonist has learnt Frost’s poem in school – the
name of the poem is written on the blackboard. So in this way, when she quotes the
poem verbatim in recounting her experiences, the poem functions as part of her
story – not Frost’s nor the filmmaker’s. This leads to the question, why Frost and
not her own words? It might suggest that the film reinforces negative social
discourse pervading issues of adolescent communication, as noted by Christin
Thurlow:
Teenagers…too often are defined as inadequate
communicators or language users, and it is not infrequently that
one hears the exaggerated folklinguistic complaint ‘I just can’t
understand what teenagers are saying these days—It’s like a
different language!’19
This would be assumptive, as it fails to recognise the film’s delicate thematic
concerns of domestic violence, and its detrimental impact on adolescents. In voicing
Frost’s poem, the adolescent embraces the metaphorical ambiguities of his text, not
only in making sense of the links between her physical, imaginative and inner
worlds, but also in communicating an intensely personal struggle and socially taboo
subject matter to her audience.20 In the film’s final moments, the line “I took the one
less traveled by” is accompanied by a scene in which the younger sister watches her
parents grieve over a coffin. One interpretation would suggest that the adolescent
has committed suicide, though this certainly isn’t portrayed. What is clearly evident
here is the adolescent’s ability to transcend social perception in voicing a complex
set of emotions, in conveying a number of suggested meanings, through a singular
poetic phrase.
4.
Production processes – ambiguity and representation of adolescence
As demonstrated, this notion of ambiguity (of infinite interpretation) that
pervades Frost’s poem carries through to the film’s plot, character and themes. But
films do not exist in narrative form alone, they engage with the text through
appropriation of cinematic technique – mise-en-scene, sound, editing and
cinematography. An analysis of the patterning of these techniques, or film style, is
of particular relevance, as it reveals the role of filmmaking in the representation of
Frost’s work and adolescence.21
Returning to a previous thought, Frost’s poem dominates the film’s narration,
but this is not achieved on a narrative level alone. The soundtrack is purposefully
left sparse - few synchronous sounds or realistic ambiences are incorporated into
the film’s sound design - and as a result the voice-over (the reading of Frost’s poem)
is brought aurally to the fore. This has a number of implications; on the one hand it
reinforces the aforementioned notions of authenticity in adaptation, and the
significance of the adolescent as principal narrator. The sparse stylistic sound
treatment - the cathartic whooshing of the fans, the slowed down mumblings of the
priest – suggests that, like the poem, what is being portrayed could be entirely
figurative and allegorical. Interestingly, it is only in film’s final moments when the
mother screams out ‘no’, that the soundtrack occupies a more realistic space (it is
the only scene in the film with distinguishable dialogue, realistic ambience, and no
dramatic musical accompaniment). This is a key turning point for the mother, a
moment of realisation, and its limited but decisive presence suggests a sort of
cathartic meeting point between representation and reality – ambiguity and
translation.
In many respects, the soundtrack occupies an unusual space as a filmic device in
that it lacks objectivity due to its invisibility.22 Unconscious of its presence, the
audience is often guided by recurrent sound motifs in the same way that a poet
disguises meaning through metaphor. Yet similarly one can consider the
employment of stylistic techniques in the image-making process as a means of
transfusing a film with subliminal meaning, since the audience is for the most part
unaware of the processes involved. For example, the entirety of the film was
deliberately shot at 75fps, rendering action at two and half times slow motion.
Images take on a dream like figurative state, directing the audience to pay particular
attention to every sensory aspect of the audiovisual experience, and in doing so
correlate their own set of interpretations (slow motion also lends imagery a timeless
quality, akin to that commanded by Frost’s renowned poem).
One might suggest the translation of poetic to cinematic language parallels the
adolescent protagonist’s rendering of her own experiences. In this sense she
occupies both narrative and filmmaking roles, taking classic literature she is
subjected to in school she expresses her intimate struggles through the predominant
contemporary medium of cinema – a medium which according to Stern,
marginalises and proliferates a negative attitude of adolescents as selfish.23 In this
light she fashions herself as a symbol of hope for adolescence; in caring and
protecting for her sister she sacrifices her own opportunities and emphatically
concludes, ‘And that has made all the difference’.
5.
Conclusions
The danger of present- day cinema is that it can suffocate its subjects
by its very ability to represent them: it doesn't possess the built-in escape
valves of ambiguity that painting, music, literature, radio drama and
black-and-white silent film automatically have simply by virtue of their
sensory incompleteness — an incompleteness that engages the
imagination of the viewer as compensation for what is only evoked by the
artist. BY comparison, film seems to be "all there" (it isn't, but it seems to
be), and thus the responsibility of filmmakers is to find ways within that
completeness to refrain from achieving it.24
Murch’s belief that cinema is misconceived as ‘more real’ and that it is the
filmmaker’s responsibility to work against this misconception certainly supports
the stylistic techniques of sparseness and abstraction as employed in the film. Yet
as demonstrated, renowned works of literature carry their own set of historical and
cultural values that carry through to the adapted film. Poetry and film also share a
common goal as creators of complex, suggestive meaning. Though physical links
are made to the real world the film interacts with the poem through the translation
and juxtaposition of metaphor, narrative, and cinematic language. In this way the
underlying themes and ambiguity presented in the poem are rendered in the
adaptation.
The narration of the film occupies an unusual space in that both Frost and the
adolescent protagonist share its narrative address. The film does not simply
represent poetry, the poem itself functions as part of the adolescent’s story world.
From this perspective, her ability to acknowledge the significance of works of art
as a signpost in her life and embrace the figurative complexities of the text in
communicating her inmost struggles challenges a negative discourse whereby
adolescents are socially defined as inadequate communicators. Finally, in
recounting her story in light of Frost’s poetic language, she assumes the role of
filmmaker, challenging a medium which purports the representation of the
narcissistic adolescent.
1 Peter Weir, Director, Dead Poets Society, 1989.
2 Judith W. Steinburgh, ‘Mastering Metaphor through Poetry', Language Arts 76.4 (1999): 324.
3 Damian Fasolo, Director, The Road Not Taken, 2010.
4 Robert Frost, ‘The Road Not Taken’, in Mountain Interval (New York: Henry Holt, 1916): 9.
5 Scott MacDonald, ‘Poetry and Film: Cinema as Publication’, The Journal of Cinema & Media 47.2 (2006): 37-58.
6 Robert Faggen, The Cambridge Introduction to Robert Frost (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 142.
7 Jacqueline Chanda and Vesta Daniel, ‘Recognizing Works’, Art Education 53.2 (2000): 2.
8 John M. Desmond and Peter Hawkes, Adaptation: Studying Film and Literature (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006), 2-3
9 Robert Frost, ‘The Constant Symbol’ The Atlantic Monthly 10 (1946).
10 Robert Stam, ed., and Alessandra Raengo, ed., A Companion to Literature and Film (Malden: Blackwell Publishing,
2004), 2.
11 Desmond and Hawkes, Adaptation: Studying Film and Literature, 40-41.
12 Trevor Whittock, Metaphor and Film (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 22.
13 Jane Mills, ‘The Concept of the Journey’, Australian Screen Education 34 (2004): 36.
14 MacDonald, ‘Poetry and Film: Cinema as Publication’, 39.
15 Sylvia M. Vardell, ‘Everyday Poetry: Making Poetry Movies’ Book Links 20.1 (2010): 36.
16 Rainer Maria Rilke, ‘The Panther’, in The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. Stephen Mitchell (New York:
Vintage, 1989): 25.
17 Nick Browne, The Rhetoric of Filmic Narration (Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1976), 57.
18 Ibid.
19 Crispin Thurlow, ‘Teenagers In Communication, Teenagers On Communication’, Journal of Language and Social
Psychology 22.1 (2003): 51.
20 Mills, ‘The Concept of the Journey’, 38.
21 David Bordwell and Kristin Thomson, Film Art: An Introduction, 9th ed (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010), 117.
22 John Belton, ‘Technology and Aesthetics of Film Sound’, in Film Sound: Theory and Practice, eds. Elizabeth Weis and
John Belton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 64.
23 Susannah R. Stern, ‘Self-Absorbed, Dangerous, and Disengaged: What Popular Films Tell Us About Teenagers’, Mass
Communication and Society 8:1 (2005): 30.
24 Walter Murch, ‘Stretching Sound to Help the Mind See’ New York Times, 1 October 2000, 2.1.
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