Frost and Miller depict a struggle for existence through the instability and uncertainty of humanity. Within Frost's collection, both 'The Road Not Taken, and 'The Sound of Trees, depict a desire in humanity to achieve, but are clouded by the accompaniment of great uncertainty. Throughout 'The Road not Taken', Frost uses static verbs such as, 'looked' and 'stood', to emphasize the wariness of the speaker who is perhaps scared to make a choice, which they know will cause the progression of their future. These verbal choices also may be a representation of how we have little physical control over what happens in our future- but the control we do possess, we are apprehensive about. This is parallel to the use of verbal choice in 'The Sound of Trees', where the trees 'sway' yet do not move, indicating, like trees, that humanity is fixated on the ground- there is a hope and desire to make a change and be free, yet doing so is difficult as we are bound by our 'roots'- setting up a struggle for reality and thus one's existence. This idea was supported by critic Matthew Curry, who proposed the concept of the trees in 'The Sound of Trees', representing 'an image for the poet's frantic need to escape, combined with the knowledge that he can't or won't'. This notion in Frost's collection links to the characters in Miller's Death of a Salesman, notoriously Willy Loman, who maintains a desire throughout the play to achieve ultimate success but cannot do so. This is demonstrated too in Happy, Willy's son, who follows into his father's fantasy, attempting to seem like he has more control over his life than he does.
Throughout the play, Happy repeats that he is going to marry- 'I'm getting married, Pop, don't forget it'' The repetition of this throughout the play depicts Happy's belief that he can control his future, one Willy Loman can be argued to be responsible for ingraining in his son's mentality- foreshadowing the struggle to accept the reality that both develop. Just like Willy and his son's state of inability to turn their 'certainty' into reality, Frost depicts the uncertainty of the speaker in his poems through the use of structural devices. Frost uses enjambment to keep 'The Road not Taken' flowing, in accompaniment to the strict rhyme scheme which keeps the words tight. The tightness of the words in contrast to the fluidity of the poem as a whole, can be inferred as a representation of the rigid nature of decision-making, yet the seemingly endless results choices may lead to perhaps why the speaker finds choosing which road to follow on to so difficult. Furthering this idea, Frost creates a cyclical element to his poem where the image of 'two roads diverged in a yellow wood', is presented at the start of the poem in the first line, and again in the final stanza, emphasizing how one clearly cannot help but come back to the original choice they made- knowing this choice, 'has made all the difference'. This cyclical reinforcement of uncertainty indicates a struggle the speaker possesses in being able to stray away from the thoughts of 'what if', linking to what Frost himself argued, 'no matter which road you take, you'll always sigh, and wish you had taken another', highlighting humanities inability to remain certain that the way one's life has diverted towards was meant to be, a concept the characters in Miller's Death of a Salesman are unable to grasp.
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This cyclical device is resonant in Frost's 'The Sound of Trees', where instead of a direct similarity in language at the start and end of the poem, there is a conjoining of ideas. At the start of this poem, the speaker 'wonders' about the trees, yet the speaker ends the poem stating they 'shall be gone'. Here Frost depicts the idea of longing, but the inability to stick through the challenges one may face along the way to see what result prevails. This idea re-iterates the depiction of a struggling agent, who is uncertain about the future yet does not have a stable enough mentality to stay content with not knowing, just like the seeming discontentment in 'The Road not Taken'. These ideas are demonstrated in Miller's play, where Willy himself spends all his time wondering about the past and hoping for the future but is not stable enough to see through the end. Willy's dependence on suicide links to his ongoing fixation on what could have been, and as critic Rafaela Dimitriadi proposed, 'what we understand about Willy's behavior is that he decided suicide was the only thing left, according to Freud's mourning and melancholia paper, a depressed person, as Willy seemed to be, is the one that tends to believe suicide will solve their problems'. Willy Loman is thus a pivotal example of an unstable man who couldn't stray from the fixation on making a change to his life, unable to escape the dream of making a name for himself and his sons.
This desire was not uncommon in 1940s America- as this period gave rise to great optimism and economic prosperity after the depletion of the Great Depression- America's economy was beginning to roar again, fuelling a fixation on the dream of success and wealth, a distant reality only in reach for few. An uncertainty of oneself is further presented through Willy's values in Death of a Salesman and his fixation on the idea of success. 'The door of your life is wide open!' Willy exclaims to his son Biff that there are still opportunities for him to achieve success despite his sons, and his inability to do so. Here Willy's descent into a world of illusion is amplified, as it is clear his character becomes more unstable and uncertain about the reality of the future, furthering the inner struggle of Willy's existence. Miller's use of exclamation after Willy's speech, shows his enthusiasm and desire for his son's to be successful, an idea which seems out of reach for the Loman's, allowing us to further question Willy's stability. Willy's instability contrasts starkly with the certainty his son Biff possesses. Biff does not fall into the dream that his father promotes but instead argues 'I'm not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you', emphasizing Biff's surety of the place he and his father hold within society, knowing that he is not going to be 'bringing home any prizes' despite his father's expectations. Miller presents Biff as aware of the futile real world, as opposed to his struggling father who seems to have submerged into a rose-tinted world of ideals, linking to the form in 'The Road not Taken', where like the ridged structure, Willy seems unable to escape the world he is so fixated upon, leading to a struggle of his existence, a man unable to accept the unpredictability of the future.
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