"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost

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;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

In this poem, Robert Frost uses his
signature haunting language and

hypnotic rhythms. But these seemingly
simple features mask a tangle of possible

meanings that has only grown thicker over
the years. Frost himself called it a

“tricky” poem, which puts the reader in
the same position as the speaker:

facing a choice. There are two key ways
The Road Not Taken can be read - one that

appears to be on the surface, and one
diving down to a possible subtext.

For some readers, taking the road less
travelled makes “all the difference”

because it represents a choice to make
your own way in life, to forge a path no

person has ever gone before. But for
others, the final lines confirm the

underlying irony of the poem. It’s been
argued that the narrator only thinks that

their choice made “all the difference,”
because it’s the only choice they can

imagine in the first place. This would
mean that the poem is actually about the

significance we assign to arbitrary
choices, and the tendency to fixate on

certain moments as crucial to our own
personal narrative. With their haunted

tone and dreamlike rhythm, there’s a sense
that the speaker is telling us about an

event that’s far in the past. But it’s not
clear whether they’re looking back with

fondness on a realization that paid off,
or lamenting the pitfalls of always

looking over their shoulder, agonizing
about opportunities that have

already passed. Of course, this all just
brings us to another fork in the road.

Which side of the debate will you pick,
and how will you make that decision?