"The Road Not Taken" Analysis

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.

"The Road Not Taken" is a poem by Robert Frost that was written in 1920. The poem consists of four stanzas of five lines. The rhyme scheme is ABAAB; the rhymes are strict with the notable exception of the last line.The poem begins with the speaker standing in the woods, considering a fork in the road. Both ways are equally worn and equally overlaid with un-trodden leaves. The speaker chooses one, telling himself that he will take the other another day. Yet he knows it is unlikely that he will have the opportunity to do so. And he admits that someday in the future he will recreate the scene with a slight twist: He will claim that he took the less-traveled road. The speaker talks about the two roads and says “the passing there / Had worn them really about the same.” and also “that morning lay / In leaves no step had trodden black.” This shows the fact that neither road is the less traveled one, they are both traveled just the same amount. The poem is primarily about the dilemma of being presented with a choice that most likely will not be able to be made again. Paths in the woods and forks in roads are ancient and deep-seated metaphors for the lifeline, its crises and decisions. Identical forks, in particular, symbolize for us the nexus of free will and fate: We are free to choose, but we do not really know beforehand what we are choosing between. Our route is determined by a combination of choice and chance, and it is impossible to separate the two. The primary concern of the poem isn't to take the road less taken as that is not even an option that is available to to them being traveled the same. Rather the concern comes from how each road will look from a future standpoint. The speaker than says “I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence.” This is very ironic in the fact that the speaker realizes that he will have to change some of his story in the future in order to get his point across. His retelling of this will either be inaccurate or hypocritical and he predicts that his future will betray him. The sigh highlights how he will not believe what he is saying himself about taking the road less taken because he himself knows that both paths were equally less traveled. The title of the poem "The Road Not Taken" helps to infuse some remorse into the poem. The speaker realizes that somewhere in the future he will second guess his choice and imagine how his life would have been if he had taken a different path through it. He will regret not having chosen the other path even though there is no such thing as the right path, just the decisions we make that combine to make our life as time passes. These decisions mark the passing of life itself as everyone's time gets closer and closer.