Robert Frost wrote “The Road Not Taken” in 1916 but many people usually misread it. The piece is a tribute to independence and individuality but a close reading of the poem reveals a much darker premise; it is a study of self-deception and people’s tendency to revise their histories (Robinson). Frost uses a well-developed stanza design and changing time frames to reveal people’s retroactive tendencies to project deep significance onto random life choices.
The piece starts with establishing a bleak dilemma of place and purpose. Frost says, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood . . . sorry I could not travel both” (1–2). The poem is situated within a “yellow wood” to create a backdrop of autumn that works as a strong metaphor for periods of transition and the limited nature of human life. The desire to experience both paths impels Frost to readily experience a dilemma because he realizes that it is not possible to exist in two places at the same time. Frost reveals that the process of making decisions is limited by physical constraints. He says, “As far as I could . . . To where it bent in the undergrowth” (3–5). Frost develops the idea that the future is like a physical bend because people are blind to what the future holds in a manner similar to how a sharp bend hides the road ahead. A person cannot predict the future despite the amount of planning they do.
The second stanza changes focus since the speaker follows a different path. He writes, “Just as fair . . . And having perhaps the better claim . . . Because it was grassy and wanted wear” (Frost 6–8). Introducing the word “perhaps” makes a choice that initially seemed logical somewhat uncertain. The speaker tries to justify his choice including the phrase “wanted wear”; however, he instantly contradicts this in the next lines. He writes, “Though as for that the passing there . . . Had worn them really about the same” (Frost 9–10). This paradox intentionally works as the main idea that the piece rests on. The majority of people presume that Frost selected the route that fewer people use but the poem indicates that both paths were evenly trodden.
Stanza 3 underscores that all humans share the same weaknesses. He writes, “And both that morning equally lay . . . In leaves no step had trodden black” (11–12). The autumn leaves were fresh and untouched because no person had used any of the paths that morning, and this made it difficult to tell the popular path from the less popular one. Frost tries to console the reader; he writes, “Oh, I kept the first for another day!” (13). Nonetheless, the reality dawns on him when he writes, “Yet knowing how way leads on to way . . . I doubted if I should ever come back” (Frost 14–15). The reader realizes that Frost highlights how time and choice move forward because each step a person takes eliminates all other alternatives.
The last stanza introduces a noteworthy change in time by leading the speaker to a distant future. The narrator predicts a time when they will reflect on this event when he writes, “With a sigh . . . Somewhere ages and ages hence” (16–17). The sigh connects with profound ambiguity that serves as an indicator of grief or an exhausted acceptance of the creation of myth. This forward-looking perspective positions the speaker to make a proclamation; he says, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and . . . I took the one less traveled . . . And that has made all the difference” (Frost 18–20). Repeating “I” across the line break works as a theatrical pause to underscore the self-conscious performance of the speaker at a phase of independence. Frost demonstrates that humans have a tendency of inventing a heroic story of rugged individualism out of an entirely random decision between two indistinguishable paths.
In conclusion, Frost transforms a simple poem about choosing a specific path into a psychological study of how people rewrite their histories. The speaker does not provide a lesson about how to make decisions; he develops a poem that reveals how people’s memories reshape the choices people made in the past. In the end, Frost’s work illustrates that people’s inclination to create stories about the past helps them invent ideas about the decisions they made even if the future is largely unpredictable.
