Running head: THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
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THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
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The Road Not Taken
Introduction
Robert Frost’s poetry still remains to be one of the strongest modes of expressions in
the field of literature. At the nexus of The Road Not taken, abodes the need to make a
decision and pick one choice over the other. As a consequence, the speaker does choose one
path over the other and goes ahead to opine that this did make all the difference. The junction
in this case can be seen to have a fork-like nature where all that can be seen are the two paths
headed in different directions. In it also important to note that whichever path one chooses,
what to encounter only lies in the exploration. There is no guide as to how to choose either of
the two, it is a matter of intuition or the consequences are based on the same. As a projection
of life—everything is a matter of taking a leap in faith.
Analysis
Among the poems written by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken is probably one of
the most popular and ambiguous works. Published in the 1916’s collection Mountain Interval,
the poem has wielded immense popularity and nearly become a hallmark of American
culture, being used in commercials, slogans and television series (Orr). Frost’s work written
on the rise of modernism is often dissected into “irreducible bits" by the modern audience and
“lives on in calendars, greeting cards, advertisements, journalistic allusions, sermons,
graduation speeches, casual conversations, and private conceptions of self” (Savoie 5).
However, the poem is often misunderstood due to its ambiguity: in the poem, the speaker
finds himself at the parting of the roads and faces a difficult choice. Having chosen one of the
roads, the speaker ruminates on this choice stating that he will tell this story years and years
later stressing that the chosen road “made all the difference” (Frost). The poem is often
interpreted in two ways: an optimistic view promoting decisiveness for the sake of a better
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outcome and a regretful admission of impossibility of choosing both roads (Finger 479). In
the present essay, an attempt to interpret the poem in a more thoughtful way will be made
through careful analysis of its components.
The Road Not Taken could be defined as a narrative poem due to a rather clearly
outlined story presented by the speaker. Frost’s speaker tells the story of his own experience
of encountering the forking roads in the woods: “Long I stood / And looked down one as far
as I could” (Frost). However, if one takes a closer look at the structure and contents of the
poem, lyrical elements will stand out – the speaker not just retells the events but also pays
much attention to his emotional experience, feelings and thoughts. In playing the emotions,
feelings and experience card, one can decipher the level of effort that goes into trying to
make such a decision.
One of the first elements the reader notices right away is the author’s careful choice of
denotations and connotations, that is, the elaborate word choice that shapes both the
narrative and the tone of the poem. Frost uses rather simple words in the poem, releasing the
reader from the need to turn to the dictionary for help: the skeleton of the poem is made up by
such lexemes as “road”, “leaves”, “day”, “morning”, “difference”, “diverge” and “take”.
Simple and neat word choice makes the poem rather close and comprehensible for the reader
and hints at the trivial nature of the situation described in it. However, the multicolored array
of feelings and moods is created by the connotations of these words: Frost uses common
words to create elaborate metaphorical meanings. For example, use of color metaphors is
visible in the poem. Already in the first line, the reader encounters “yellow woods”, which
hints at the serenity and grace of autumn. On the other hand, Frost uses “black” with a rather
negative connotation, uniting this lexeme with “tread”: “leaves no step had trodden black”
(Frost) are perceived as pure and intact, virgin in a sense. In the first and last stanzas, the
roads “diverge”, which means that they take different directions. However, another meaning
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of this word (which strengthens ambiguity in the poem) is “to become or be different in
character or form” (Merriam-Webster). That is, the two roads might be perceived as different
and leading to different destinations.
Another word used by the author to characterize the road is “wear”, which is used as
both a participle and a noun. The path chosen by the speaker “wanted wear”, and “passing
[…] had worn” the road. The connotation found in the dictionary states that “wear” is “to
exhaust or lessen the strength of” something (Merriam-Webster), and this connotation
endows the speaker’s decision to tread this path with a less positive and affirmative air. The
speaker’s doubts are amplified by the use of such words as “doubt”, “perhaps” and “sigh”.
Ambiguity of the feelings caused by the choice is proved the blurred connotation of the word
“sigh” in this poem. As “sigh” is commonly defined as “an often involuntary act of sighing
especially when expressing an emotion or feeling (such as weariness or relief)” (MerriamWebster), the reader might get somewhat confused about the outcome of the speaker’s
choice. If interpreted from the aspect of sighing as a result of the weariness, one gets the
feeling that the speaker is actually worn out by having to pick through his mind to find the
appropriate path to follow. If interpreted as an act of relief, it is basically in the sense of
having taken a huge load of one’s shoulder by resolving the dilemma and embarking on the
journey. However ambiguous this might be, it is important to note that it is very personal and
any user of the poem will definitely fit in.
The lyrical element of the poem reveals itself immediately in the poem as the speaker
turns out to tell about his own experience complementing this story with his own feelings.
According to one version, the speaker in the poem is Frost’s friend Edward Thomas, and the
reader sees him as a person uncertain about his decisions and apparently prone to regrets. It is
never stated in the poem that the outcome of the choice was positive, Frost only notes that
this choice made “all the difference” (Frost). The narrator’s indecisiveness and proclivity to
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regrets are also shaped by the recurrent statements about equality of the roads (which is also
achieved by the use of several metaphors). It is difficult to overlook that the speaker insists
on the fact that the roads were actually equal: Frost uses such metaphors as “just as fair”,
“equally lay” and “worn really about the same” emphasizing the equal value of both options.
The personality of the narrator (as expressed through the lexical choices and the
course of the narrative) affects the tone of the poem. The air of doubt and regret reveals itself
already in the first stanza of the poem where the speaker states: “And sorry I could not travel
both” (Frost). In the second stanza, the speaker makes the choice and treads one of the roads,
but he is not certain about his choice even now, for he states that the chosen path had
“perhaps the better claim” (Frost). While the second path was chosen, the first one was “kept
for another day”; and the speaker expresses his doubt again, as for coming back to the fist
path this time. In my perception, the tone of The Road Not Taken is utterly uncertain and
doubtful as the speaker reiterates his doubts again and again in the course of the narrative.
The beauty of this uncertainty lies in how realistic it is. Frost manages to capture the
exactness of how decisions make us feel. Firstly we are relieved or wearied, after which we
have to contend with whether the choice was the right one and there is the slightest possibility
to pick the other one.
Robert Frost does not make frequent use of sensual imagery in the poem; however,
there are still words and metaphors appealing to the reader’s senses and intensifying
impressions. The author appeals to visual perception by using color adjectives such as “yellow”
and “black”; words like “grassy”, “undergrowth” and “leaves”, in turn, reflect the sensual
experience of walking in the woods. However, Frost does not provide much sensual imagery,
and the reader constructs sensual experience based on the scarce aid provided by him in the
first three stanzas. In my perception, sensual experience conveyed in the poem ends after the
speaker chooses the road, for the rest of the poem is more or less dominated by his reflections
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and doubts, which are rather abstract. The limited use of sensual imageries is another strength
of this masterpiece. Frost does understand that how people visualize scenarios has a sense of
vivid and differential subtlety and he explores this very element. He leave it to the reader to
curate images, to place the exact shade of the snow, to paint the grass and leaves. As a
consequence, one gets the feeling that the poem has a sense of transcendence to it. A reader
who interacted with it during Frost’s time will clear have their own perfection of their
environment as it is with a modern reader.
As it has been mentioned, Frost is rather ascetic and neat in his choice of words and
figures of speech: the reader does not encounter any complex language devices throughout the
poem, which makes it outstanding in its simplicity. However, there are still a number of
figurative expressions that make the narrative more elaborate. In addition to the mentioned
color metaphors, Frost uses personification when describing the road: it “has […] a better
claim” and “wants wear”. However, the most outstanding figure of speech used in The Road
Not Taken is oxymoron, and it is not limited to a certain phrase or stanza but is built up
throughout the entire poem. The speaker contradicts himself several times: he either stresses
equality of the roads (as illustrated above) or states that one of them was “less travelled by”
and “made all the difference” (Frost). These interchanging contradictory statements make the
tone of the poem even more doubtful and uncertain. It can also be stated that the entire premise
of one of the roads being less travelled does work into how the choice on which road to take
was arrived at by the speaker. At one instant, the one less travelled has a chilly atmosphere to
it which is intriguingly scary. On the other hand, one can easily rush to take the road most
travelled as means of avoiding any risks which in itself is very escapist. Depending on the
person making the decision, it is always about how one perceives the environment—some
people are adventurous whilst others do try to find an easy way out.
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Speaking about the form of the poem, The Road Not Taken is written in iambic
tetrameter. However, the lines are hypermetric and contain nine instead of eight syllables: “And
both that morning equally lay” (Frost). The poem has four stanzas, while only the last stanza
begins with a new sentence (this might hint at the purpose to make the concluding stanza stand
out). In contrast to the meter, the poem’s rhyme scheme is rather stable. Each five-line stanza
has the A-B-A-A-B rhyme pattern, and the lines are rhymed primarily with the help of
assonance and consonance in some places. A good example is the following stanza:
A “I shall be telling this with a sigh
B Somewhere ages and ages hence:
A Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
A I took the one less traveled by,
B And that has made all the difference.” (Frost)
In the cited stanza, one can identify assonance between “sigh”, “I” and “by” and consonance
between “hence” and “difference”. As this instance is the only point where words are rhymed
with the help of consonance, it seems that Frost wanted to emphasize the word “difference”
and complete the message of the poem in this way.
Depending on the character and the emotional state of the reader, the poem can be
interpreted either pessimistically or optimistically. However, I would say that there is no
black and white in the poem, and the message of this poem is rather ambiguous if deprived of
any context. The entire poem is weaved of regrets and controversies: the speaker regrets that
he cannot go both ways, states that both roads are equal, then affirms his choice of the second
road and then – with a sigh – tells that this choice made the difference for him. As this poem
is deeply interconnected with the culture of American modernity, I would offer a more
complex interpretation of its message.
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Conclusion
However much this poem is branded as being ambiguous in its context, it remains a
masterpiece. This can be attributed to how it juxtaposes all the entire facets on human
existence. Humans do ponder on choices each and every minute and depending on
personalities and past experiences, it is always a matter of one person making a decision that
is the exact opposite of what another makes and both parties, inadvertently, getting away with
it. The poem can be perceived as a typical reflection of the human nature: we are often prone
to blame ourselves for choices made in the past when any challenges emerge on our life path.
Self-deception typical for humans often makes us perceive choices and hardships in the
wrong way and act irrationally, just as the speaker of the poem did choosing the less traveled
one of the two equal roads. Therefore, it seems that the poem is both a hymn of regret and a
motivation to face choices fearlessly. Reading Frost’s poem, I realize that the decision that
makes difference should be faced with responsibility and readiness to overcome all
challenges that might emerge as one treads the chosen path.
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References
Finger, Larry L. “Frost's ‘The Road Not Taken’: A 1925 Letter Come to Light.” American
Literature, vol. 50, no. 3, 1978, pp. 478–479., www.jstor.org/stable/2925142.
Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” Web. April 30, 2017.
Merriam-Webster. Dictionary. Web. April 30, 2017. < https://www.merriam-webster.com/ >
Orr, David. “The Most Misread Poem in America.” The Paris Review (Sep 11, 2015). Web.
April 30, 2017. < https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/09/11/the-mostmisread-poem-in-america/ >
Savoie, John. “A Poet's Quarrel: Jamesian Pragmatism and Frost's ‘The Road Not
Taken.’” The New England Quarterly, vol. 77, no. 1, 2004, pp. 5–24.,
www.jstor.org/stable/1559684.
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