THE ROAD NOT TAKEN - ROBERT FROST
The Poem’s Theme
‘The Road Not Taken’ is more than a poem about someone trying to decide which road he’s going to take on a stroll through the woods. It is a poem about the journey of life. The two roads diverged in a yellow wood forest symbolizing a person’s life. The narrator’s choice about which road to take represents the different decisions we sometimes must make and how those decisions will affect the future. Think of the expression, ‘down the road’, that we often use to describe something that might happen months or even years from now, and you will see how Frost is making the connection between life and traveling. Frost captures the uncertainty about making decisions. Our natural desire to know what will happen because of the decisions we make is in the first stanza of the poem:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth’
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth’
Here, Frost uses the bend in the road as a metaphor for what the narrator wishes he could see but ultimately can’t make out in the undergrowth. The narrator eventually decides to take the other road because it really does not matter. Whichever path he chooses, he has no way of knowing where he is going to end up.
The only difference between the two roads is that the one the narrator chooses in the second stanza is ‘grassy and wanted wear’; in other words, it doesn’t look like anyone’s taken it before or in a long time. At this point in the poem, Frost tries to encourage readers to overcome the fear of the unknown: someone must be the first person to try a new thing.
‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—/ I took the one less traveled by / And that has made all the difference.’
The indecision of the speaker and his divided state of mind is heightened by the repetition of “I” split by the line division and emphasized by the rhyme and pause. It is an effect possible only in a rhymed and metrical poem and thus a good argument for the continuing viability of traditional forms.
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