The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.
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.
5
10
15
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.
A Student Explication (Example)
Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken” is often recited at graduation
gatherings or on posters. The title alludes to the theme of choosing a road or path in your
life and both the path and the ability to choose are the two main points that Frost focuses
on throughout the poem. He tells about his personal journey using a first person “I”
perspective to indicate that he has experienced the consequences of his own choices.
In stanza one his journey begins as he paints images of yellow woods and
undergrowth. This imagery helps create a calm tone and his use of assonance to create
internal rhyming with long “o” sounds as well as an end rhyme pattern of ABAAB (with
short “o” sounds) adds to the calming rhythm of the poem. At this point, the reader’s
interpretation is literal as we imagine these two wooded paths. We do have to infer that
he comes to a fork in the road because he tells us there are “two roads” and yet he can’t
go down both of them.
The journey continues in stanza two with more imagery of “grassy” paths with
“wanted wear” alluding to the fact that people have been down that road before so it’s
probably a safe choice. The allusion to the “grass being greener on the other side”
immediately comes to mind and we sense that this decision might be regretted later. We
also notice that he continues to use both internal rhyming and end rhyme, but the vowel
has changed to a long “a” focus which continues throughout the third stanza. This
changing of sounds parallels the differences between the two roads even though in stanza
two he claims they are “really about the same.”
In stanza three he even uses the word “equally lay” to emphasize that his choice
wasn’t easy because the roads were so similar. The difficulty of his choice is further
emphasized by the use of the word “doubted” in line 15. He knows that he probably
won’t get a second chance at both of these roads. This finality is further reiterated in the
opening lines of the final stanza with his choice of the word “sigh”. He does reveal that
he took the “less traveled” road and we get the feeling that it was a good decision because
he said it “made all the difference” in his life, but we also get the feeling that he still
sometimes thinks “what if” about the other road.
Frost’s poem is pretty straight forward and contains few examples of figurative
language, but his overall message is less about roads and more about taking chances and
going with your gut instinct. He clearly had a choice between two good options and we
often think about choosing between good and evil instead of good and good. He doesn’t
come right out and tell us we have to listen to our heart or our gut sometimes, but his
omission of “how he arrived at his decision” makes it pretty obvious that the final
decision was up to him. He doesn’t tell us that something else or someone else helped
him decide which road to choose. That means that we are the ultimate deciders of our
fate.