Frost said his poem "The Road Not Taken" was tricky--very tricky. Three things make his poem tricky--the time frame, and the words "sigh" and "difference."
Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” has been one of the most analyzed, quoted, anthologized poems in American poetry. According to Wikipedia, “Popular explanation of this poem is that it is a call for the reader to forge his or her own way in life and not follow the path that others have already taken.”
A Tricky Poem
Frost claims that he wrote this poem about his friend Edward Thomas, with whom he had walked many times in the woods near London. Frost has said that while walking they would come to different paths and after choosing one, Thomas would always fret wondering what they might have missed by not taking the other path.
About the poem, Frost asserted, "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem - very tricky." And he is, of course, correct. The poem has been and continues to be used as an inspirational poem, one that to the undiscerning eye seems to be encouraging self-reliance, not following where others have led.
But a close reading of the poem proves otherwise. It does not moralize about choice, it simply says that choice is inevitable but you never know what your choice will mean until you have lived it.
First Stanza – Describes Situation
The poem consists of four stanzas. In the first stanza, the speaker describes his position. He has been out walking the woods and comes to two roads, and he stands looking as far down each one as he can see. He would like to try out both, but doubts he could to that, so therefore he continues to look down the roads for a long time trying to make his decision about which road to take.
Second Stanza – Decides to Take Less-Traveled Road
He had looked down the first one “to where it bent in the undergrowth,” and in the second stanza, he tells that us that he decided to take the other path, because it seemed to have less traffic than the first. But then he goes on to say that they actually were very similarly worn. The second one that he took seems less traveled, but as he thinks about it, he realizes that they were “really about the same.” Not exactly that same but only “about the same.”
Third Stanza – Continue Description of Roads
The third stanza continues with the cogitation about the possible differences between the two roads. He had noticed that the leaves were both fresh fallen on them both and had not been walked on, but then again claims that maybe he would come back and also walk the first one sometime, but he doubted he’d be able to, again reflecting the idea from the first stanza about being sorry he could not travel both.
Fourth Stanza – Two Tricky Words
The fourth stanza holds the key to the trickiness of the poem:
- 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.
Those who interpret this poem as suggesting non-conformity take the word “difference” to be a positive difference. But there is nothing in the poem that suggests that this difference signals a positive outcome. The speaker could not offer such information, because he has not lived the “difference” yet.
The other word that leads non-discerning readers astray is the word “sigh.” By taking “difference” to mean a positive difference, they think that the sigh is one of nostalgic relief; however, a sigh can also mean regret. There is the “oh, dear” kind of sigh, and “what a relief” kind of sigh. Which one is it? We do not know. If it is the relief sigh, then the difference means the speaker is glad he took the road he did; if it is the regret sigh, then the difference would not be good, and the speaker would be sighing in regret. But the plain fact is we do not know what that sigh is. Again, the speaker of the poem does not even know the nature of that sigh, because that sigh and his evaluation of the difference his choice will make are still in the future. It is a truism that any choice we make is going to make “all the difference” in how our future turns out.
Careful Readers Won’t Be Tricked
So Frost was absolutely correct; his poem is tricky—very tricky. But only if we are not careful readers. If we read into poems claims that are not there. And in this poem, it is important to be careful with the time frame. When the speaker says he will be reporting sometime in the future how his road choice turned out, we have to realize that we cannot assign meaning to “sigh” and “difference,” because the speaker himself cannot know how his choice will affect his future, until after he has lived it.
