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All people are travelers, all choosing their paths on a map of their life. The great thing about man for Frost is that he has the power of standing still where he is. There is never a straight road there are always curves and turns in which one must encounter and act upon. Readers can interpret the poem The Road Not Taken in many ways. It is a persons past, present and the way one see things, which determines their choices and paths they follow.
This poem shows how Frost believes that it is the road that you choose that makes you the person you are. Decisions are always hard to make. It is impossible not to wonder what would have happened before you made your decision and what could have happened after you made your decision. Frost shows this in the line And sorry I could not travel both Knowing one can not travel every path there is a realization that one is always missing out on something in life. When the traveler is about to make his decision he looks down one as far as I could. The road leads to the unknown, as do choices in life.
When he looks at the paths he does not know where they lead, nor does he have any knowledge of what he will encounter. He must choose which path he will take and which one he will leave behind, the same way you decide what to choose in any choice of life. Then took the other, just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim, There is a reason that the path he chooses had the better claim it was grassy and wanted wear; It was not a path for everyone because the other path was more worn and most people had traveled that one. He calls the path he chose the road less traveled by.
The travelers choice reflects his personality. It shows that he is an individual and does not follow the crowd. He wants to do what is different. And both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black. The leaves had covered the ground and since the time they had fallen no one has passed on the road. Frost does this because each time a person comes to the point where they have to make a choice, it is new to them, somewhere they have never been, and they feel like no one else has either.
I kept the first for another day! The desire to travel both paths is not unusual, but knowing how way leads on to way, the speaker of this poem realizes that the decision is not a temporary one and he doubted if he should ever come back. This shows how the traveler knows that his choice will affect every other choice he makes afterward. Once you make a choice there is no changing it or turning back.
At the end of the poem the feeling of regret strikes the traveler. This poem is usually interpreted as an assertion of individualism, but critic Lawrence Thompson has argued that it is a slightly mocking satire on a perennially hesitant walking partner of Frosts who always wondered what would have happened if they had chosen their path differently. He realizes at the end of his life, somewhere ages and ages hence, he will have regrets about having never going back and traveling down the road he did not take. Yet he remains proud of his decision and recognizes that the path he chose made him who he is. I took the road less traveled by and that had made all the difference. To the traveler what was most important was the fact that he did what he wanted even if the one he chose was less traveled.
If he had taken the other path he would be different than he is now. There are many equally valid meanings to this poem and Robert Frost intended this. The poem is simple but can make a reader think extremely deeply. He achieved a universal understanding. There is no moral in this poem; there is just a narrator who makes a decision in his life that changes it. Any reader can relate to his experience.
Bibliography: Works Cited Brians, Paul. Reading About the World. New York: American Heritage Custom Books. Van Doren, Mark. Robert Frosts America.
The Atlantic Monthly June 1951, 32 - 34.
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