Analysis: The Road Not Taken

Erin Mills
Mr. Currin
English 102-9
9 April 2015
“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost While a short piece, Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” is a beautiful literary masterpiece, though it is often misinterpreted. Many readers believe that the focus of the poem is “taking the road less traveled” – refusing to conform, asserting bravery, and directing your own future. However, line 11 says, “And both [roads] that morning equally lay/in leaves no step had trodden black.” Neither of the roads had been traveled, which reshapes the meaning of the entire poem. Rather than about uncustomary, courageous, life-changing decisions, “The Road Not Taken” is about how life is full of chance, lost opportunities whether for good or bad, and future reflection on the
outcomes of the roads we choose to take. This is evident as the poem’s speaker deliberates about the complexity of his choices and ponders how each could affect his future.
Unknown paths in the woods symbolize life’s decisions and predicaments, and thus readers can easily identify with the poem. While we can do our best to make logical decisions, it is often left to chance to determine how the choices we make will affect us. For example, when high school seniors begin searching for a college, they can do their research, make visits, form relationships with people on campus, join clubs and organizations, etc. all in hopes of succeeding, but it is entirely possible that once they actually arrive they will discover that they dislike their chosen major, get a particularly difficult professor, have trouble making friends, and so on. Then, they are left back at the beginning, at the same metaphorical fork in the road, with the opportunity to choose a different path, and their second blind guess may or may not turn out the same way as the first. Additionally, we often experience this in our Christian walks. The ways we choose to live lead us to a split between culture and God, and we have to choose whether to remain faithful or to turn. Similarly, the speaker in the poem knew that he had to make the choice between two paths
and did not know how the choice would affect his life. Neither road had been traveled and they looked similar, yet he would be unlikely to ever return to the exact same place. At the critical point, he chose to believe that one road was slightly less traveled (although he had discussed how they were just the same, meaning that he just took a guess) and knew that if all worked in his favor, he would claim “somewhere ages and ages hence” that he prepared his own way. The speaker speculates that in the future he will reminisce on the finality and life-changing nature of that one decision, and of the series of decisions he would certainly be making throughout the remainder of his life. If his life turned out how he intended, he would be content with his choice. If he experienced crises, he would always wonder whether the other road would have taken him somewhere different. Lines 4 and 5 discuss the road as a metaphor for the future. The speaker looked upon the road as far as he could see, but as in our lives, he could only see a short distance ahead and had to just blindly choose a path. Though the roads were worn the same, he settles on one that he believes to be “the better claim,” although there is little to no difference. His quandary is evident in lines 13-15 where he expresses that he wishes to take both roads, but knows once he makes the choice there is no going back.
It matters at what point in our life we encounter these forks. In youth, we have many years to make other decisions. But as we age, our decisions perhaps matter even more, as our time grows increasingly limited. We can speculate that the speaker is middle-aged, based on the setting of and description of fall – it is not as vibrant and adventurous as summer and not as dynamic as spring, but crisp, cool, and waning towards the bitterly cold winter. Because the speaker is at this point in his life, his decision will somehow entirely change his life. We know this both because of his possible age and because he says that he will be reflecting on it for years to come. This poem is relatively light-hearted, though, and unlike the “lovely, dark, and deep” woods in Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” these woods seem more serene, lush, and thick with opportunity. The speaker hopes that his decision will be the right one, but oftentimes there is no right path – just a chosen path and the other path. The moments of decision, whether good or bad, compose a life.