The Road Not Taken

“The Road Not Taken” is self-reflective poem, one that reflects upon the speaker’s choices in his life, choices that take him down the road less traveled. Like the quote by Frost above, the speaker is aware that choices made while young impact the person we are when old. While the speaker is aware of the fact that this choice will necessarily limit other choices he could make, other experiences he might have and will form the self he will become, he nonetheless projects that it is a route that he will think one day made all the difference. “The Road Not Taken” encompasses both the microcosm and macrocosm of human existence and experience. The literal scene and situation is a traveler in a “yellow wood” who comes upon “two roads diverged.” The speaker views each of the paths and decides that each is “just as fair” and “the passing there/Had worn them really about the same.” The speaker decides to keep one path for another day, though “knowing how way leads on to way/…doubted if…[he]…should ever come back.” One day the speaker will tell the story with a “sigh” as he recalls taking the road “less traveled by” which “has made all the difference.”

Of course, the two roads are symbols in this poem. They symbolize the different choices and paths we might take in our own lives. The speaker has taken the one that is the l

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aments in stanza one that he remains sorry he “could not travel both.” Thus, the speaker is empathizing with the human condition of having to make choices in life, one life, wherein the types of choices chosen make all the difference after choosing them. The traveler and two roads represent nature, literally, but symbolically they mirror the individual choices we must make which will affect our lives in significant ways after the choosing. The speaker is not necessarily in a depressed or unhappy-with-his-present-situation mood at the end of the poem. He may only be sighing because he is aware of the complexity of life, the short span of life, and the fact that one traveler can never walk down more than one road at the same time. Each choice we make defines us and each choice we make negates the possibility of another choice. In that instant of the present choosing we mold our future being, perhaps years before we ever develop into the end product of the choice. However, we must argue that the speaker seems to believe that taking “the one less traveled by,/…has made all the difference.” The speaker appears to be content with the choice he made years hence in the woods, because if he were not he would not say that taking t
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Frost Fitzhenry, FROST Road, road traveled, Brace Jovanovich, Sound Sense, traveled difference, road traveled difference, Noble Books, CITED Fitzhenry, choices life, Barnes Noble, choices life choices, taking road traveled, speaker traveled, appears content, speaker aware, barnes noble, life choices, taking path, path difference,
Approximate Word count = 1263
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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