| The Road not Taken.....Growing up in a home where great works of literature were greatly appreciated, we were constantly encouraged to explore the bookshelves that spanned floor to ceiling. Novels and short stories captured my attention for hours at a time, but when I was quiet or wanted to think, I would curl up behind the family entertainment center with my small back against the warm brick chimney. I would drag blankets and pillows in with me creating a cozy little nest. It was there at a young age I became friends with Emily Dickinson, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Robert Frost, William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, Robert and Emily Browning, Robert Burns, Alfred Noyes, and so many others. When I first started reading poetry I didn’t really understand much of what I was reading, but I loved it because it was so beautiful. As I began to understand the words that I drank off the pages more and more, my love for them became much stronger. No matter what stage of my life that I was treading through, there was always a poet could describe what I was feeling.
As I was ending my senior year in high school, my best friend gave me a Robert Frost book for my birthday, and in its pages she wrote a note next to “The Road Not Taken.”
Everyone is a traveler on this journey through life; we choose the roads and paths that we take and the roads that we leave un-traveled. There isn’t and never will be a straight road leading in one direction with a clear view of what lays ahead. Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” is a symbolic of the trials, complication, and decisions that every human being must, and will, face through the course of their lives. The title of the poem is self-explanatory, but the contents that follow can be interpreted many different ways. It is a poem that every individual may interpret differently given their life experiences and which path they choose to take. I feel that Robert Frost knew this; through his use of “free imagery” he makes his poem have a unique complexity, causing you to ponder what he really meant.
I believe that Robert Frost reveals through this poem the belief that the path or road that one chooses makes a person who they will become.
The first line describes the setting, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” The description of “yellow wood” suggests that it is fall and the leaves are changing, which could be symbolic of the change in season in a person’s life. In the following line, “And sorry I could not travel both,” the narrator shows regret that he can travel only one of the roads. Giving the feeling that the choice he makes is of great importance, it is as though he doesn’t want to forever wonder what it would be like to have traveled the other road. In the next few lines of the stanza, the narrator spends much time choosing which road to take. As he tries to make his decision he, “looked down one as far as I could,” trying to get some indication of which road to choose, but the end could not be seen.
In the next stanza he looks down the next road, “Then took the other, as just as fair,” this one being, “perhaps the better claim.” It was a better claim because, “it was grassy and wanted wear,” thus it was obviously the path that the mainstream or majority of people did not take. I believe that Frost used the word “wanted” instead of another adjective, because it shows a kind of longing.
Surprisingly, in the next stanza the narrator declares the two roads the same, “both that morning equally lay.” Frost made the two roads look the same because if the two roads had appeared to be different, then the decision to choose would be much easier. By making the two roads appear to be the same the narrator must ponder what each path’s outcome may be.
“In leaves no step had trodden black,” I believe that Frost depicted that both roads were covered with leaves, covering all signs that others had traveled there, because when we come to a large decision in our own lives often we felt as though we are the only ones that have ever stood in that exact spot. I know that is how I feel when I was deciding which college to attend, although I knew that thousands upon thousands had come to the same fork in the road, I still felt as though I was the only one in history to ever feel confused.
The traveler finally decides the second road, “Oh, I kept the first for another day!” as though he might have the chance to come back to this same place and choose the first road. However, when the narrator says at the end of the third stanza, “I doubted if I should ever come back,” it’s as if the traveler realizes that once a step is taken or a thought spoken, it is finalized in history, there is no turning back.
The final stanza is one filled with regret, “telling this with a sigh,” I believe that the narrator is sighing because he is unsure of his original decision. “Somewhere ages and ages hence,” in this line the narrator is wondering if at the end of his life he will have regretted taking the path. I wonder why Frost chose to title the poem, “The Road Not Taken,” instead of, “The Road Taken,” - it holds an air of discontentment. My thoughts are answered in the last two lines, “I took the one less traveled by, / and that has made all the difference.” The path that each individual takes will shape and mold who they will become; there is no road map telling us to take the road less traveled or the road that is more traveled. Frost leaves us wondering: is there a right path, or is there only the path chosen and the one not chosen? |
