The Road not taken Robert Frost

Discuss Think about a time in your life when you had to make a difficult decision. How did you decide what the right action was?

The Road Not Taken The poet describes a day when he came to a fork in the road while he was walking through the woods. The speaker wishes he could somehow have travelled both roads at the same time but since that is impossible he has a decision to make. He stood for a long time inspecting one road carefully before deciding on the “the other”. The speaker decides to take it because it was “grassy” and needed to be worn down more than the first road.

The Road Not Taken However, even after the poet makes the decision he continues to think about the first road, saying that perhaps both roads were worn “about the same”. The speaker thinks he might return to the other road at a later point: “I kept the first for another day!” But he knew even then the chances of getting back to the same point were unlikely. The poem finishes with the poet imagining how he will think about this moment and decision later in his life. He will tell the story “with a sigh”. He will describe how he took the more difficult path: “I took the one less traveled by” and that “made all the difference” to his life.

THEME: Having to Make a Choice This poem deals with how important choices are made. We might think about it for a long time, as the poet does, but the choice is never easy. Frost describing choosing a road is a symbol for making an important, perhaps life-changing, decision. We can only see so far into the future, we can’t know what will happen to us in the future. Frost describes how he could only see so far down one of the paths before it turned into the undergrowth. In this way, the right choice is not always obvious. We might have to choose between two ways that are equally appealing or “just as fair”. The fact that both paths look the same suggests that the choices we face are often not as clear as we would like them to be and that luck plays a big part in everything we do.

IMAGERY Frost paints a vivid image of the scene that lay before him as he walked through the woods. He mentions that the wood was “yellow” and that leaves covered the ground, revealing the season is autumn. He also describes how the road “bent in the undergrowth”. The description works to create a clear image of how desperately he wants to see down to the end of the road but how impossible it is to see where the road will lead.

POETIC TECHNIQUES Symbolism The poem uses the symbol of the fork of the road to represent important choices we must make in life. It suggests life is a journey and that there are different paths we can take along the way. Repetition Lines 2, 3 and 4 all begin with the word ‘and’. This repetition at the beginning of these lines shows the speaker’s uncertainty as he tries to make a choice.

POETIC TECHNIQUES Metaphor The road splitting in the woods is a metaphor for a choice. The poet has come to the point in his life where he needs to make a choice that takes him down one path and stops him from taking the other. The fork in the road is a metaphor for choices and because it is a metaphor that runs throughout the whole poem, it's called an extended metaphor. When Frost describes looking down the two roads as far as he could, this is a metaphor for the future. Just like we can only see a path in the woods for so far, we can only see the consequences of our decisions for a short while into our future.