Road Not Taken Controversy

Robert Frost’s 1916 poem The Road Not Taken is one of the most influential pieces of literature in American history. Since its publication, the poem has been subjected to much misconstrued analysis, which has led to its being stereotyped as a poem about following the speakers instinct. Ultimately we are made to believe that choosing the right, less traveled “road” in life leads to a better future; however, this theory is contradicted in the poem’s own lines. The popularity of The Road Not Taken is due almost entirely to this false understanding. This iconic poem has been used in advertisements for Mentos, Nicorette, AIG, and even the job-search web site Monster.com. The lines have been borrowed by singers and songwriters including Bruce Hornsby,

This conclusion, however, does not make sense when we look at what the protagonist told us earlier in the poem- neither path is more traveled than the other. Frost seems, instead, to allude to the psychological struggle inherent in decision-making. Eventually, a choice is made, and because the two roads are identical, the narrator picks one, and tells himself that one day he will come back and choose the other, just to see what could have been. While it was made clear that both roads were the same, the narrator fools himself into thinking they were not. Despite the beginning of the poem, it isn’t wholly clear if in the end the narrator sighs out of contentment, or regret. Poetry is, if nothing else, open to

The speaker is “telling this with a sigh.” In the poem’s final stanza, he broods over the path he chose not to follow, rather than taking full advantage of the path he did follow. Jay Parini, Frost biographer, suggests: “My guess is that Frost, the wily ironist, is saying something like this: ‘When I am old, like all old men, I shall make a myth of my life. I shall pretend, as we all do, that I took the less traveled road. But I shall be lying.’”(Joseph Bathanti ncartseveryday.org) “I am not a nature poet. There is almost always a person in my poems,” Robert Frost famously said. He saw how prone his dark, ironic, and complex poems were to misinterpretation. Frost didn't take the high road or blaze his own trail, he chose between two very similar courses of action and his decision itself is what “made all the difference.” We all face seemingly unimportant decisions every day which alter the course of our lives from that point onward. Sometimes, we can save the alternate path for another day, but eventually, as Frost points out, time goes on and we leave those choices behind us