Barely a year ago, I wrote an essay on Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” a classic and a long-time favorite. The main reason why this is one of those poems that people never shut up about is that it’s difficult – nearly impossible – to successfully conclude whether the speaker regrets choosing one path over the other or if he is glad about it. I believe it’s the latter – perhaps because I’m the type of person who sees a half full glass.
I’m happy to share sections from my essay and hope my thoughts on the poem might interest you.
The speaker is not necessarily Frost himself, but probably an elderly person reminiscing over a moment in his life when a choice decided his fate. Many have found this poem to be about individuality, emphasizing on the fact that the speaker traveled the road no one else has taken before him. The tone is difficult to decipher, thereby creating a challenge in understanding whether the speaker is glad about the decision he made. The sigh shows no indication of the speaker’s feelings. The following line mentions a time long passed, which exceptionally proves that that this person acknowledges that there is no way for him to change his affected circumstances.
Analyzing the poem stanza by stanza, it is possible to see that whatever decision the speaker made; it is a conflict nonetheless. Frost implicates that this traveler ‘stood and looked down’ one of the roads for a long while, attempting to predict what it held before him (line 3 and 4). However, he cannot tell much from where he is standing, because it is impossible to tell once the road turns in a bent. When he gives up his observation, he turns his attention to the other road.
The speaker thinks he might as well pick this one, because it seems grassier and unused. This detail implies some of the speaker’s character: He prefers to stand apart from the crowd and approach matters differently than other people, or maybe even do completely new things. The fact that he spends so much time contemplating proves that he sees himself as innovative in mind, perhaps as far as regarding himself a daring adventurer. Upon closely inspecting the roads, though, the speaker firmly grasps that the grass on both sides appear ‘worn really about the same’ (line 10) so then again, he cannot see the difference.
Furthermore, the speaker notices that on this autumn day, leaves fallen from the trees have fallen on the roads. They cover the grass and lay still and untouched by anyone (“no step had trodden black” [12]), meaning no one has been there. Once again, the speaker is uncertain how to go about his journey. He considers picking one of the roads for the time being, which brings me to my favorite lines (14 and 15) in the poem:
“Yet knowing how way leads on to way/ I doubted if I should ever come back.”
Without knowing what lies ahead of him on that road, Frost says that the speaker might be incapable of returning to the same spot and choose the other path. When one picks a door to go through, the other doors close and we are offered a new set of doors in order to move forward. The metaphor grows especially strong here as it is said that life is more complex than paths found within a wood. Even so, one can get lost in the wild or forget how they got to where they have arrived.
The sigh in the forth stanza carries a double-meaning. For one, the audience can feel the heavy weight of the ultimate decision. Secondly, it brings the emotion to that choice, which (as said) is ambiguous. I believe it is a sigh of fatigue as well as content, because this traveler has walked on a long journey since he picked a road to travel (“Somewhere ages and ages hence” [17]), but he still feels happy about it. The reason I find this poem optimistic is because of the very last word: difference. Since I am under the impression that this traveler likes to be unique, he took neither of the roads presented to him; he pick another path entirely, therefore, “the one less traveled by,” and that made all the difference.
Robert Frost (biography.com)
Author on Adventure 
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and sorry I couldn’t travel the both
so I let the Jarvis to decide…
– Tony Stark (Ironman)
(btw, your description offers fresh perspective)
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Reblogged this on Janet's Thread 2.
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Anna,
I have a long commute and Frosts poem came to me as I was within my own thoughts about the story I am going tell. I know of the vagaries of life and the limits of time and I don’t know if I should find the woman in the story and pass on the message. Any thoughts?
Now to the Poem.
I think that Frost is like so many of us, he observes that the chosen road is not the road of regret or success or adventure, it is the path taken when a choice is to be made. That for good or ill there are consequences for those choices.
It is a reflection of what is or maybe what might have been. The poem is in hind sight, sometimes the best and clearest way to be an observer, particularly of your own life. When choices are made no one of us can imagine what or where the story we make from those choices will end.
The next story is one that is full of the consequences of the choices that have made all the difference.
I once knew a young man who met a woman; he had told me that it was love at first sight. He was 20 she was 19.Their love was grounded, passionate and steady. The young man wanted marriage and the young woman wanted that also. However in the young man’s past was another young woman.
They had broken apart many months before, for the same reasons that these things happen to any of us. She called him and announced that she was carrying his child, she was 19 also. Well he left his true love, his love at first sight on his premise of “doing the right thing”.
Well, the next part of the story didn’t have a happy ending for any one.
The young man just left his true love, his love at first sight. He didn’t call, he didn’t write. He didn’t answer her letters of heartbreak or why.. He left no word at all. That little flame of dreams and hopes that we must nurture to keep a love alive was just extinguished and ground to dust. It was an act of selfishness, cowardice and shallow cruelty.
Shortly after going back with the woman carrying his baby and after making plans to marry he told her that he couldn’t go through with it. He was not in love with her but he would pay for the child if she wanted to keep him. Her mother insisted that it would ruin her reputation to keep the child and he was given up for adoption. After the child was born they drifted in and out of each other’s lives but they parted ways after several more years. I think it went on so long out of guilt. She married and passed away at a relatively young age. She never had any more children. In the time of this story mothers were not allowed to contact their child,however she was able to meet him before she passed.
Now the young man tried to call his true love several times but he was never able to speak to her again, on his final try her mother told him that she had married and he moved on with his life and never saw or heard from her again. He eventually married and then married again and lived an ordinary comfortable life. He did meet his son once or twice. I’m not aware he ever told his story to anyone but me.
The young man is gone now but he asked me once if I was ever to meet her again, his true love, I was to tell her he had been callous and a coward and that it had been his moment of greatest regret. I don’t know if he meant leaving her or not telling her he was leaving.
John
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