![]() Anyway, he could always return one day and try the ‘original’ road again. The speaker opts, at random, for the other road and, once on it, declares himself happy because it has more grass and not many folk have been down it. This pondering about the different life one may have lived had they done something differently is central to “The Road Not Taken.” Any person who has made a decisive choice will agree that it is human nature to contemplate the “What if…” had you made the choice you did not make. It is about the road taken, to be sure, as well the road not taken, not necessarily the road less traveled. This poem is not about taking the road less travelled, but about individuality or uniqueness. Nonetheless, that is the way he is going now, and the place he ends up, for better or worse, was the result of his decision. In “The Road Not Taken,” Frost does not indicate whether the road he chose was the right one. Viewing a choice as a fork in a path, it becomes clear that we must choose one direction or another, but not both. When making a choice, one is required to make a decision. The central message is that, in life, we are often presented with choices. There are two roads in an autumnal wood separating off, presumably the result of the one road splitting, and there’s nothing else to do but to choose one of the roads and continue life’s journey. “The Road Not Taken” presents the speaker and the reader with a dilemma. Was the choice of the road less travelled a positive one? It certainly made “all the difference,” but Frost does not make it clear just what this difference is. ![]() The reader is left to make up their own mind about the emotional state of the speaker at the end. ![]() He was destined to go down one, regretted not being able to take both, so he sacrificed one for the other “The Road Not Taken” is all about what did not happen: This person, faced with an important conscious decision, chose the least popular, the path of most resistance. It is the hallmark of the true poet to take such everyday realities, in this case, the sighs of a friend on a country walk, and transform them into something so much more. He told Thomas: “No matter which road you take, you’ll always sigh and wish you’d taken another.” So it’s ironic that Frost meant the poem to be light-hearted, but it turned out to be anything but. In other words, Frost’s friend regretted not taking the road that might have offered the best opportunities, despite it being an unknown.įrost liked to tease and goad. ![]() ![]() Thomas would sigh over what they might have seen and done, and Frost thought this quaintly romantic. Robert Frost wrote this poem to highlight a trait of, and poke fun at, his friend Edward Thomas, an English-Welsh poet, who, when out walking with Frost in England would often regret not having taken a different path. If life is a journey, this poem highlights those times in life when a decision has to be made. “The Road Not Taken” is an ambiguous poem that allows the reader to think about choices in life, whether to go with the mainstream or go it alone. Hand written with a steel nib on Fabriano hot press watercolor paper. ![]()
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