The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Overview of the Poem
• Walking in a wood and the road comes to a fork
• He stands a long time at the meeting of the two roads and looks down one path as far as he can but it disappears in the ‘undergrowth’ as it takes a bend
• He then considers the second path. He sees it is less worn and has more grass. The leaves are still untrodden so the paths remain fresh and exciting. It seems that he is the first traveller to pass this way for a while
• ‘long I stood’ shows that he contemplated the decision
• The persona begins to think about how he cannot take both paths and be the same “traveler”
• “Oh, I kept the first for another day!” Despite this wish he realizes he can never come back and take the untaken path because his choice will lead him in a different direction. He knows that “way leads on to way.” Realistically he doubts if he will ever come back because it is impossible to return to that place and make the same choice under similar circumstances because the original choice will have changed his life
• Frost realizes that had he taken the other road he would not be where he is today. He was adventurous and choose the road that had been traveled the least recently and that one decision changed his life
• He will be telling the story about his choice with a “sigh”. This suggests a more reflective stance on his choice and the effect it will have on his life.
• “Ages and ages hence” when he tells the story of his choice he will wonder about his life if he had taken the other road
Analysis of poem
• In ‘The Road Not Taken’ Frost has used the journey to offer ideas about how effective decisions are made. He also explores how our choices in life move us through life so that returning to previous times and situations becomes unlikely if not impossible
• On the surface the poem seems to be a meditation on past events and actions, a contemplative reflection about what has gone on before. Research into the poem informs us that the poem is written with a sense of irony
• The ambiguity which dominates the poem seems to be intentional. The only certainty in the poem is that it deals with a solitary traveler who has come to a fork in the road and must choose which way to go.
Choices in life can be as simple as deciding where to go out to eat or what to wear and as difficult as deciding which college to enroll in and who to marry. The most strenuous part is not knowing if you made the right decision because even the simplest choices can shape the future. There are no guarantees in life so every decision counts. Second guessing is as natural to humans as breathing, which makes the decision making process that much harder because it is more than just picking something and sticking with it, there is always the curiosity of what if? Even when faced with the most difficult decisions one must live with the choices they have made, which is very similar to what the speaker of “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is forced to deal with.
The desire to travel down both paths is expressed and is not unusual. The speaker of this poem realizes that the decision is not just a temporary one and he "doubted if I should ever come back.
The choices made on an adventure make the journey more important than the destination. In “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, a traveler in the poem is faced with two paths which represent two different decisions. The traveler struggles with these two choices, wishing he could just pick both, and if he didn’t like one he could just go back and take the different path. However, when he finally comes to a decision, it makes a huge impact. The speaker realizes this, saying, ”I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference” (Frost 20). When he made his choice and picked the one most people wouldn’t make, it changed his life, which makes the journey more important than the destination. The choice he made actually changed the destination ,which means it is more important because it affected the overall outcome.
What does the narrator mean when he says that taking the road less traveled by has made all the difference when the roads seem to be the same throughout the poem?
In “The Road Not Taken” Frost emphasizes that every person is a traveler choosing the roads to follow on the map of their continuous journey-life. There is never a straight path that leads a person one sole direction in which to head. Regardless of the original message that Robert Frost had intended to convey, “The Road Not Taken” has left me with many different interpretations. Throughout this poem, it is obvious that decisions are not easy to make and each decision will lead you down a different path.
One of the most interesting things about Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” is how Frost meant for his poem to be taken as a satire of his friend, Edward Thomas, but instead was taken at face value and as a metaphor for the choices we make in life ( Orr 1). The poem itself, is a about a traveler at a cross roads. The traveler looks at one and then looks at the other describing it as, “as just as fair.” The speaker then contradicts himself in the next line by saying the second path, “perhaps having the better claim.” The poem ends with the speaker taking the path less traveled saying, “that has made all the difference.”
The person in the poem is a very conflicted person. The poem, “The Road Not Taken”, the man in the poem doesn't tell us too much about himself, but we know that he is facing a significant decision. The road he's walking on, and the life he's leading, is splitting into two separate roads up ahead. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both”. (Clugston, 2014)
The first reason that shows why the theme is making choices can change your life is demonstrated with “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler long I stood” (Frost 1-3). What these lines mean is that there is a person, not necessarily an actual traveler that has two choices they must make. The person wishes that they could be two people in order to be able to do both things at once.
624). The title of the poem clearly emphasizes the road that was not used, rather than focusing on the road that was selected less. Which is an important distinction given that one statement accentuates the choice the traveler did not make versus the other emphasizing the selection of a less travelled path. Hence, the contradiction of the title and the end of the poem convolutes the primary point of the poem and allows readers to draw different conclusions regarding the overarching thought Frost was attempting to
Why did I decide to take the road more or less traveled by? In Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not taken, he describes himself coming to a diverging path. I have read this particular poem time and time again and always come to the same conclusion. Frost’s intent was to show that people make choices, whether it’s the right or wrong one it’s essentially up to interpretation since we frame our own pasts and futures.
Decisions separate one’s life from another. Robert Frost proves this to be true in his poem “The Road Not Taken.” The metaphorical twist Frost uses in his words and sentence structure emphasizes the importance of different decisions and how those choices will impact the rest of one’s life.
Some people go through their lives without reflecting about how their decisions have shaped them as a person. The poems “Fire and Ice” and “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost both use the importance of decision making and its effects on the way we live to highlight how our path through life is defined by our choices. At the same time, Frost uses the extreme opposites in “Fire and Ice” and the similarities of the choices in “The Road Not Taken” to explore human nature and permanence of decisions.
There is never a straight path for one to follow on life's journey. By using two paths in which to choose from, Frost leaves one to realize that everyone must travel and will reach a point of decision. With stating 'And sorry I could not travel both,'; Frost
In Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”, Frost shows the everyday human struggle to make a choice that could change the course of one’s life. In his poem, a person has the choice to take one road or the other. One road is worn out from many people taking it, and the other is barely touched, for fewer have taken that road. Throughout the poem, the speaker learns that just because so many other people have done one thing, or walked one way, does not mean everyone has to. Sometimes you just have to go your own way.
The overarching theme throughout the entire poem is that of choices. The concept of “two roads diverged,” or a split in the road, is a metaphor representing a choice which the narrator must make. Being “sorry [he] could not travel both… [being] one traveler” illustrates that, although he wishes he could see the results of both choices, as seen in saying he “looked as far as [he] could to where it bent,” he is but one pers...