I wanted to post some thoughts here on Frost’s most quoted poem ‘The Road not Taken’. I am sure you are already familiar with the poem, you probably heard it at your high school graduation or in some sort of inspirational talk/speech. It’s used as one of those ‘feel good’, ‘everyone’s special’ sort of things. Very saccharine. Here it is to refresh your memory:
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.
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.
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.
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.
So yeah, a quick read of it and you do walk away thinking, It’s good to take the less beaten path and to be a individual, blah, blah, blah. Read it again. One more time, pay attention to the words used in each verse… Notice anything? Is the poem really what people seem to think it is? I’m beginning to think not.
There are a couple of points that make me think Frost is doing something more subtle here than making some bland statement on being unique. First, the last two lines of the second verse “Though as for that the passing there, Had worn them really about the same.” These lines directly contradict what he has said before about the paths. He states he went on the one ‘less traveled’ but here he states that the two of them are about as the same. The beginning of the next verse is the same. Both the trails are equal, Frost hints that it doesn’t matter which one is taken as the two paths are the same…
So what does that mean when you arrive at the last line, that choosing the one path ‘has made all the difference’? What difference? If the paths are the same, if they don’t have any substantial differences, at least as far as they both can be viewed from the crossing. The difference then only lies in the chooser’s view after the fact. Making the choice completely subjective. I don’t think the poem is about being individualistic or striking out alone off the beaten path at all. Rather it is about viewing the past with nostalgia and a little remorse…