All of us have experienced a crossroads at some point in our lives, where we have had to make a choice that will affect our future. How do we know which path to take through life? And how will we know that we have made the right decision?
These are the questions faced by the speaker of perhaps Robert Frost’s most famous poem: The Road Not Taken. He finds himself in a yellow wood, on a path which splits in two and goes in different directions. That the wood is “yellow” immediately presents some ambiguity: readers may interpret this as a beautiful springtime wood full of sunshine and daffodils, suggesting the speaker’s youth, or as an autumnal scene suggesting quite the opposite. Or perhaps the yellow connotes cowardice, as the speaker procrastinates over his decision.
The Road Less Travelled?
He peers down each road as far as he can, but of course the paths bend away out of sight -- just as in life we may see the immediate consequences of our actions but not the long-term effects. In the end, the narrator chooses the one which is “grassy” and “wanted wear.” in other words, the road less travelled. Reasonable enough: many people choose to blaze a trail through life, deliberately following a different and perhaps more difficult course.
However, the poem presents us with a huge contradiction. After making his choice, the speaker goes on to tell us that “the passing there/Had worn them really about the same” and that “both that morning equally lay/ In leaves no step had trodden black.” The lexical choices in this stanza reinforce the speaker’s apparent confusion: “perhaps”, “though” and “really about” hardly suggest certainty.
Back to the Future
The final stanza takes us to some future point in the speaker’s life, when he will be “telling this with a sigh/Somewhere ages and ages hence”. What could the sigh mean? It could be interpreted in many ways: relief, regret, tiredness or sarcasm, and how we decide to read this part of the poem has a huge effect on the meaning of the poem’s final lines.
The speaker claims that he chose the road less travelled, and that this choice has made all the difference to his life. Is he being sincere? Or sarcastic? Has he really convinced himself that he chose the grassier path, or is he simply boasting to his audience, making false claims in order to impress them? The poem gives us no easy answers: even the repetition of “I” in lines 18-19 present a dilemma – depending on the tone of voice adopted here, this could seem either boastful and arrogant, or hesitant and unsure.
Fate vs. Free Will
Perhaps the whole point here is that the speaker has no way of knowing whether he took the right road and made the correct choice in his life. If read ironically, the poem’s final line suggests that for all the consideration the speaker gave his decision, his life would have ended up the same whichever road he chose.
For me, the poem seems to be one of regret, the title suggesting that the speaker is still dwelling on the path that he didn’t take. However, if, as the final lines suggest, he would have ended up in the same place anyway, it would seem that for all our deliberations, human choice is meaningless. Our lives are pre-destined by Fate no matter which path through that confusing wood we may choose to take.
For further discussion of Frost's poems including Nothing Gold Can Stay, Dust of Snow and Stopping by Woods, please click on the appropriate link.
