The Road Not Taken -Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

-Robert Frost

Summary of The Road Not Taken

·         Lines 1-2

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both”

The poet while travelling on foot in the woods reaches a junction where two roads diverge. Immediately, he realizes that as a traveller travelling both the roads is impossible. Here two roads are meant two ways of life. The woods are yellow, which means that it probably falls and the leaves are turning yellow.

·         Lines 3-5

“And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;”

As it is impossible to travel both the roads, the poet stands there trying to choose which path he’s going to take. However, the poet wants to go down both paths and is thinking about it hard. He is staring down one road, trying to see where it goes. The small plants and greenery of the woods block his view.

·         Lines 6-8

“Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,”

The phrase could mean something like “as just as it is fair,” as in proper, righteous and equal. But this doesn’t quite apply to a road. “As just as fair” is an example of a simile. Then the poet decided to check the other path because he found the other road to be less travelled and grassy one. “Wanted wear” is an example of personification.

·         Lines 9-10

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

After travelling through the road, he found that both the roads are equally travelled. First, he found the first road to be the more travelled one, but then he says that both the roads to be equally travelled. The ‘as for that” refers to the path being less worn.

·         Lines 11-12

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

Here, again, the poet found both the paths looking same. Perhaps, he goes in the flashback. It was tough for him to recognize the real road as in the morning he was the first person to walk on the road. He couldn’t decide the right path as no step had smashed the leaves on the roads to allow him to go for the right one. These lines are an example of imagery.

·         Lines 13-15

“Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.”

The poet here saves the first road for another day. He knows how “way leads” to another, and then another until you end up very far from where you started. The poet here saves the first road for another day. Then in the third, he doesn’t think he will ever be able to come back and take the other path, as much as he wishes he could.

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·         Line 16

“I shall be telling this with a sigh”

This line is the example of the poet’s failure in choosing the right path. The word‘sigh’ reflects that he is disappointed about the decision.

·         Lines 17-19

“Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood and I-
I took the one less traveled by,”

He accepts the fact that he is a failure in taking the right decision. ‘Ages and ages’is an example of alliteration. Perhaps, he chose the less travelled one.

·         Line 20

“And that has made all the difference.”

The poet took the path that no one else did, and that is what has made the difference in his life that made him successful. However, a “difference” could mean success or utter failure.

Analysis

The poem The Road Not Taken is made with a rhyme scheme of ABAAB. The poet in the poem decided to seize the day and express himself as an individual by choosing the road that was “less traveled by.” Moreover, the narrator’s decision to choose the “less-travelled” path shows his courage. In terms of the beauty, both paths are equally “fair”. The narrator only distinguishes the paths from one another after he has already selected one and travelled many years through life. The Road Not Taken is one of Frost’s most beloved poems and is frequently studied in high school literature classes.

The Road Not Taken

                                                                                                                -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; 5

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, 10

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. 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. 20

Summary

The speaker stands in the woods, considering a fork in the road. Both ways are equally worn and equally overlaid with un-trodden leaves. The speaker chooses one, telling himself that he will take the other another day. Yet he knows it is unlikely that he will have the opportunity to do so. And he admits that someday in the future he will recreate the scene with a slight twist: He will claim that he took the less-traveled road.

Form

“The Road Not Taken” consists of four stanzas of five lines. The rhyme scheme is ABAAB; the rhymes are strict and masculine, with the notable exception of the last line (we do not usually stress the -ence of difference). There are four stressed syllables per line, varying on an iambic tetrameter base.

Commentary

This has got to be among the best-known, most-often-misunderstood poems on the planet. Several generations of careless readers have turned it into a piece of Hallmark happy-graduation-son, seize-the-future puffery. Cursed with a perfect marriage of form and content, arresting phrase wrought from simple words, and resonant metaphor, it seems as if “The Road Not Taken” gets memorized without really being read. For this it has died the cliché’s un-death of trivial immortality.

But you yourself can resurrect it from zombie-hood by reading it—not with imagination, even, but simply with accuracy. Of the two roads the speaker says “the passing there / Had worn them really about the same.” In fact, both roads “that morning lay / In leaves no step had trodden black.” Meaning: Neither of the roads is less traveled by. These are the facts; we cannot justifiably ignore the reverberations they send through the easy aphorisms of the last two stanzas.

One of the attractions of the poem is its archetypal dilemma, one that we instantly recognize because each of us encounters it innumerable times, both literally and figuratively. Paths in the woods and forks in roads are ancient and deep-seated metaphors for the lifeline, its crises and decisions. Identical forks, in particular, symbolize for us the nexus of free will and fate: We are free to choose, but we do not really know beforehand what we are choosing between. Our route is, thus, determined by an accretion of choice and chance, and it is impossible to separate the two.

This poem does not advise. It does not say, “When you come to a fork in the road, study the footprints and take the road less traveled by” (or even, as Yogi Berra enigmatically quipped, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it”). Frost’s focus is more complicated. First, there is no less-traveled road in this poem; it isn’t even an option. Next, the poem seems more concerned with the question of how the concrete present (yellow woods, grassy roads covered in fallen leaves) will look from a future vantage point.

Analysis

Four stanzas, each of five lines in length (a quintrain), with a mix of iambic and anapaestic tetrameter, producing a steady rhythmical four beat first person narrative. Most common speech is a combination of iambs and anapaests, so Frost chose his lines to reflect this:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

This simple looking poem, mostly monosyllabic, has a traditional rhyme scheme of abaab which helps keep the lines tight together, whilst the use of enjambment(where one line runs into the next with no punctuation) keeps the sense flowing.

The whole poem is an extended metaphor; the road is life, and it diverges, that is, splits apart, forks. There is a decision to be made and a life will be changed. Perhaps forever.

Tone/Atmosphere

Whilst this is a reflective, thoughtful poem, it's as if the speaker is caught in two minds. He's encountered a turning point. The situation is clear enough - take one path or the other, black or white - go ahead, do it. But life is rarely that simple. We're human, and our thinking processes are always on the go, trying to work things out. You take the high road, I'll take the low road. Which is best?

So the tone is meditative. As this person stands looking at the two options, he is weighing up the pros and cons in a quiet, studied manner. The situation demands a serious approach, for who knows what the outcome will be?

All the speaker knows is that he prefers the road less travelled, perhaps because he enjoys solitude and believes that to be important. Or he's an individualist and prefers to set his own agenda. Whatever the reason, once committed, he'll more than likely never look back?

On reflection however, taking the road because it was grassy and wanted wear has made all the difference, all the difference in the worldi

Further Analysis

The Road Not Taken suddenly presents the speaker and the reader with a dilemma. There are two roads in an autumnal wood separating off, presumably the result of the one road splitting, and there's nothing else for it but to choose one of the roads and continue life's journey.

·         The metaphor is activated. Life offers two choices, both are valid but the outcomes could be vastly different, existentially speaking. Which road to take? The speaker is in two minds. He wants to travel both, and is sorry he cannot, but this is physically impossible so he ponders his options, looking down one of the roads as far as he can, noting a bend, which seems to bring about an immediate reaction.

The speaker opts for the other road and, once already on it, declares himself happy because it has more grass and not many folk have been down it. And anyway, he could always return one day and try the 'original' road again. Would that be possible? Perhaps not, life has a way of one thing leading to another and before anyone knows it, change has occurred, and returning is just no longer an option.

But who knows what the future holds down the road? The speaker implies that, when he's older he might look back at this turning point in his life, the morning he took the road less travelled, because taking that particular route completely altered his way of being.

The Road Not Taken has entered the modern consciousness and one or two of its lines are now embedded in the collective memory. Just think about 'the road less travelled' and the title itself - both are often used in a confused way, which would have pleased Robert Frost.