Reflections on Roads Less Traveled

What you may not know about Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken."

You have probably encountered Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken.” Perhaps, if you are like me, you first heard of it in childhood, where you were taught the most common interpretation of the poem: that the narrator, faced with a fork in a road in the woods, chose the road “less traveled by,” and that this choice led him to great success. Perhaps you thought that the moral of the poem was that you should take the road less traveled, “forge your own path in life.” And perhaps, if you are like me, at some point in your life, probably long after the familiar message of the poem was first ingrained into your head, you were told that this interpretation of the poem was incorrect—that Frost was actually exhibiting a rather sophisticated level of irony, and the poem was not actually intended for children, and that its true message was actually the opposite of what it was famously purported to be.

I was first exposed to this alternate interpretation of “The Road Not Taken” in my senior year of high school. This was also the first time that I had noticed that the poem was titled “The Road Not Taken,” and not “The Road Less Traveled,” a realization that had sparked a lot of other questions about what I had taken for granted as true in my life. I was in my AP English class, with a teacher that was fabled in my school for being difficult (incidentally, this teacher is the main reason why I knew how to write an essay in college, and I therefore feel as though I owe a lot to him). We were in the middle of a whole unit on Robert Frost, which was torture to my seventeen-year old mind, which did not have patience for poems, and particularly disliked those that did not say what they meant, or provide any reason as to why anyone should care about what they meant in the first place. If I remember correctly, we did not start with “The Road Not Taken,” but instead with a few other poems that I had never heard of before and thus really couldn’t care about. I think one of them was about a wall? Either way, I was fully disenchanted with Robert Frost by the time the teacher got to “The Road Not Taken,” but for some reason what he said managed to stick with me anyway.

He told us that the usual interpretation of the poem: that the narrator took the less traveled road, and that this choice “made all the difference” (the assumption being that this was a good difference), is actually bullshit, and that if you read the poem closely (which we were obviously supposed to do because we were taking his notoriously hard AP English class), you realize that both roads were actually equally traveled, and that the famous proclamation: “I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference” is actually a proclamation of the narrator’s delusion. There was no “road less traveled,” and the narrator’s choice of road had actually made very little difference. In fact, the poem was written as a playful mockery of Frost’s indecisive friend Edward Thomas, who would take walks in the woods with him, and spend a lot of time puzzling over which paths they should walk.

There was no “road less traveled,” and the narrator’s choice of road had actually made very little difference.

Upon learning this for the first time, poring over the words of the poem and not fully wrapping my head around it, I went home and told my mother about it. She was an elementary school teacher who had taught the poem in the past—the normal version, not this weird, pretentious-sounding version that I wanted so badly to understand (if only because I hate being wrong). She did not believe me when I first told her, and at that point, my understanding was still pretty basic, so I had trouble defending it. She ended up finding some articles that confirmed my English teacher’s interpretation, and finally accepted them with a small amount of resentment. Apparently she hated being wrong, too. Besides, who’s to say their interpretation was better than hers, anyway? I never fully grasped the poem, even though I’m fairly certain that I wrote a paper interpreting it that I got a decent grade on. And now, for some reason, it is on my mind. So, nearly seven years after AP English, I’m going to give the poem another shot, and try to see exactly what my teacher was talking about, really parse it out, for the other skeptics out there. I will go through it stanza by stanza, taking breaks to explain my own interpretation of the poem. Forgive me if you are already familiar with the poem, and find my analysis overly pedantic, condescending, or, conversely, unsophisticated or base.

As an aside, it was not until years after high school that I really started interpreting literature for myself. A harmful side effect of assigned reading in English classes is that while it familiarizes students with classic works of literature, it does so at the expense of their engagement with them. I’m sure I’m not alone in my lifelong hatred of any book that I’ve ever been assigned to read. There is no better way to ensure someone’s non-enjoyment of a work of literature than to assign it in school. Even the best of students will begrudgingly struggle their way through it and then look up the “correct” interpretation of it on the internet so that they don’t get any points taken off of their paper. An even more detrimental side effect to this is that this mentality then extends beyond school, and we go on through life believing that works of literature have “correct” and “incorrect” interpretations, and that one can best learn the “correct” interpretation by looking it up. There is a lot of unlearning involved in once again trusting your own intellect. But, that’s exactly what I’m trying to do now, so here goes:

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;

The beginning to the poem has not yet veered too far off course from what I would have expected, prior to my entire conception of the poem being turned upside down. The two roads are introduced. I’m presented with a snobbish opportunity to over-analyze Frost’s choice of the word “yellow” for some potential symbolism, but I don’t care, and therefore will assume that he chose it for aesthetic or rhythmic purposes. The second line introduces the first semblance of humanity to the poem. The narrator is faced with a common human dilemma: a difficult choice in which he has to choose between two equally desirable options.

The next line, “And be one traveler, long I stood” has always puzzled me. In high school, I think I just ignored the line; all of the words were comprehensible separately, but together, they were meaningless. Blank space. And even once you have an idea of what Frost is trying to say, it’s still a little awkward. Here is my theory. Thematically, “And be one traveler” should be grouped with the lines before it, (i.e. “And sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler,” with “Long I stood” starting the next line). The statement could have been left out altogether without compromising any meaning (as the fact that the narrator was a single entity that could not split himself in two and take two roads at once is presumably implied), but rhythmically, Frost was forced to put the “And be one traveler” statement where it was, in order to preserve the flow of the poem. The poem consists of iambs—those little two-syllable heartbeats that give works of Shakespeare their life—and the use of iambic meter is very constricting. If you, like my seventeen-year-old self, think that you could write this poem better than Robert Frost, try to write a poem in iambic pentameter (or iambic tetrameter, this poem’s rhythmic structure). It’s very hard to adhere to the rhythm without sacrificing at least some of your meaning. It’s remarkable that “The Road Not Taken” can adhere to this structure and still be so vivid, with its only blunders being a few redundant phrases.

The remaining lines document the narrator looking down one of the paths, really scoping it out, peering as far into the future as he can see. It’s a poignant stanza. I, too, often wish that I could experience the joys of two separate paths in life, and lament the knowledge that I will inevitably have to choose. I, too, try to look forward as far as I can conceive when trying to make a decision, only to watch the future twist, serpentine, out of view.

I, too, often wish that I could experience the joys of two separate paths in life, and lament the knowledge that I will inevitably have to choose.

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,

The first part of this stanza, up to “wanted wear,” is also fairly expected. He picked the other road, the one he had not initially looked down. It seemed just as good as the first one—maybe even a little better—and, after all, he had to pick one of them. The road was “grassy and wanted wear,” implying that it hadn’t been taken very often. Everything seems good so far.

The second half of the stanza is where it gets freaky. “Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same.” I can think of no purpose of the phrase “though as for that” besides as more rhythmic filler, so I will just ignore it (and maybe come back to it seven years from now with fresh eyes). The remaining part, “the passing there Had worn them really about the same” is the real meat of the stanza. This is the plot twist. The reader realizes for the first time that the narrator was wrong in his assumption that the road was “grassy and wanted wear,” or perhaps, conversely, that they as the reader were wrong in their childhood-indoctrination-fueled assumption that the fact that the road was “grassy and wanted wear” implied that the road was less traveled, when nothing in the text of the poem explicitly compared the chosen road’s “want of wear” to the other’s at all. So, with the knowledge that the two roads are in fact equally trodden, we move on to the next stanza:

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.

This stanza offers some clarity. The first two lines prove definitively that both paths were in fact both rarely trafficked—perhaps implying that each individual must forge their own path, even if they feel as though they are following in someone else’s footsteps. The middle line, “Oh, I kept the first for another day!” is one of joy and optimism. It features the only exclamation point in the poem, and it is well deserved. It is a line of youth and energy and perhaps a bit of naiveté. The narrator here, for one moment, believes that he can experience both paths, that his choice is not definitive, that he has all the time, all the opportunity in the world. That even as he travels further into the woods, he does not really have to give up any opportunity, any potential. This notion is quickly questioned as reality sets in. The last two lines offer the stark realization that the only way the narrator may travel is forward; that once he makes a choice, he is stuck with that choice, and that even if he dares look back, he will be faced only with labyrinthine darkness.

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.

This is the only part of the poem that my primitive self had paid any attention to—the source of my “incorrect” assumptions. The first two lines set the scene. The narrator is no longer speaking of the present, but of the distant future, after the passing of a whole lifetime. (Why is the narrator sighing? In relief, after a life well lived? In sorrow?) Then the famous part: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” A beautiful ending to a beautiful poem. It flows musically, and while there are arguably a few superfluous words thrown in, no word sounds superfluous. But what does it mean? Taken literally, these last lines seem to simply mean that the narrator chose the less traveled road, and that this choice has made a presumably drastic difference in his life. This gets confusing, however, when the rest of the poem is considered.

If the rest of the poem is to be taken literally, “I took the one less traveled by” must be a false statement. Frost previously established that both roads “equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black.” There was no “less traveled” road—neither had been traveled at all. Therefore, the only conclusion that I can come to (a conclusion that I’m admittedly borrowing from my high school teacher) is that the narrator’s future self is lying, lying to the person he is telling his story to, and perhaps to himself as well. This makes sense. When you really think about it, this type of lying is inevitable. It is a common bias to believe yourself more grandiose than you actually are—and believing in our autonomy, attributing importance to our choices, is one of the ways in which we give our lives meaning. Furthermore, when we fib in this way, our audience does not realize our lies, which is illustrated by the fact that the more common interpretation of the poem is the taking of the phrase “I took the one less traveled by,” at face value without any notice of the contradiction underlying it. This is perhaps the poem’s most effective irony. The reception of the poem demonstrates one of its main points: that hindsight paints a rosy picture that is often not grounded in reality, and that at the end of the day, convenient misrepresentations of one’s past are often more “true” than the truth itself.

The reception of the poem demonstrates one of its main points: that hindsight paints a rosy picture that is often not grounded in reality, and that at the end of the day, convenient misrepresentations of one’s past are often more “true” than the truth itself.

The final line, “And that has made all the difference” is perhaps even more puzzling, as we do not have a definitive answer as to its truth or untruth. The previous line, while strange, is at least falsifiable, but this one can go either way. We know for a fact that the narrator did not really take the road less traveled, but did his decision make “all the difference” nonetheless, as he claims? For one, it depends on how you defines “difference.” Maybe something important happened as a result of his choice. Maybe, if he had taken the other road, he would have emerged from the woods just a few moments later, and the chain reaction that occurred would have prevented him from meeting the love of his life. Maybe the difference he referred to was a bad one, and there were diamonds buried just beneath the surface of the path he left behind. Maybe the only difference was internal, and the pride of having made his choice, despite having no physical consequence, still made a difference to him. Or maybe there was no difference at all, and that no matter what path he took, he was destined for the same end, emergence at the other end of the forest, with the same lessons learned and essentially the same experiences gained. There would be no way of him knowing, anyway. He couldn’t know the outcome of the other path, once he chose one.

So was there a difference? Or is it just something that the narrator said, to make himself feel good? Is there a distinction between these two things? Are we even in the driver’s seat, or are we simply blinded by the illusion of choice, on track towards a set destination? A destiny? Maybe these questions are too great, and that’s why the narrator preferred to live in fantasy.

Maybe the reason the poem is titled “The Road Not Taken” is because it ultimately centers about this vital mystery of what would have happened if he had made the opposite choice.

Maybe one’s experience and interpretation of the poem is by design indicative of the way that they would answer these questions.

The idea that you can forge your own path, and that this can ultimately lead to great success in life, is a pleasant one, and I am not surprised that it is such a popular interpretation of the poem. Who doesn’t want to believe in their own autonomy, their own significance? Frost expects this; it is the exact fallacy that the narrator of the poem falls prey to when he proclaims his uniqueness. But the poem makes it clear that there are many roads, none of which are traveled except for by the individual that they are meant for. Besides, if there were only two roads, and the majority of people took the road less traveled, would it not quickly become the road more traveled?

Robert Frost would probably say that it does not matter. He would also probably urge you to interpret the poem in the way that makes the most sense to you. So take a lesson from the superficial interpretation that you likely once believed, and forge your own interpretation. Just make sure to do so thoughtfully.