I've recently reread this poem and can't help thinking that perhaps this poem is misunderstood. There seems to be a few lines that suggest that the speaker really did not know which road was the road less traveled. He states that the roads had been worn about the same and that morning they seemed equally. Then in the last verse he states "I shall be telling this with a sigh." Usually when a person sighs when telling something it's not positive. Perhaps the speaker really doesn't know if it was the path less taken and he's too proud to admit it and therefore insists that he did. I don't know maybe I'm just over thinking it since I'm in a pessimistic mood. What do you think?
I think people too closely associate the title of his poem and the common expression, "The road less travelled." I believe he's talking about how his life has changed since he took the second road. How it has continued on and on, and he's wondering what it would have been like if he'd taken the first one. He thought he would come back to the first road another day, but he never got to. It's been a long time since I've read this poem. I like it a lot though.
Already by the second stanza he took the other "having perhaps the better claim; Because it was grassy and wanted wear". It was only while "passing there" that he realized they were worn "about the same". In the third stanza he goes back, remembering what the two paths looked like from that standpoint, at the fork. He explains what he was thinking at the time and now realizing that "way leads on to way; I doubted if I should ever come back." The last stanza is tinged with the same regret as in the first, "sorry I could not travel both". And then the solemn powerful realization that his entire life depended on what, in appearance, was "the road less travelled by" but which was in reality worn about the same. I read this poem not as a prescription to choose "the road less travelled by", that we should all do what is unusual or unique, but rather, ironically, that "all the difference" is no difference at all! I read it as the traveller doing what seemed like a good idea at the time, because a choice had to be made, which is a kind of tragedy. The choice of one path over another for what was in fact a non-reason (not really less travelled by) is what Frost alludes to, I think. So perhaps I can read this poem as saying that it doesn't matter which path you choose, but that a choice has to be made and this choice will lead by a chain of choices to a totally different outcome, but no better or worse than the outcome of choosing the first path. Hence the sigh...
Mind blown. Wish I could analyze writing like that and then explain it perfectly. I have much to learn.
I see what you mean. I really like your idea and it makes a lot of sense. I know that different people have different perspectives and in such different opinions. I do agree though that the poem may be about most of what you said.When I put the title "The Road not Taken" in context with the poem its self I feel like it produces a sense of regret. Like the whole poem is about the road that he didn't take. I don't know. Poetry isn't my strong point but something just seemed different when I read this poem today.
Exactly right! The title of the poem is, after all The Road Not Taken. That is the regret. He isn't vaunting his pride at having taken the road less travelled by, he's uttering a deep human regret, the need to choose, to the exclusion of all other possibilities.
I feel like many teachers and professors teach this poem incorrectly. Almost all of them teach it as taking pride in taking the road less traveled.
And here is confirmation of your suspicion that this poem is widely misinterpreted (a much better analysis than mine, but in the same direction): SparkNotes: Frost
