Analysis Of The Road Not Taken
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost deals with that huge distinguished question of “How to make a difference in the world?” At an initial glance of the poem, it notifies us that the choice one makes matters, ending: “I took the one less travelled by, / And that has made all the difference.”
A near reading shows that the solitary intention that was made earlier by our travelling narrator maybe wasn’t all that considerable since both roads were pretty much the same anyway (“Had warn them really about the same”) and it is only in the remembering and retelling that it made a difference.
We are left to contemplate if the narrator had instead travelled down “The Road Not Taken” might it have also made a difference as well. In a sense, “The Road Not Taken” rips apart the traditional belief of self-identity, which pivots on the significance of choice, as in the case of democracy in general (choosing a candidate), as well as various constitutional freedoms: choice of religion, choice of words (freedom of speech), choice of group (freedom of assembly), and choice of source of information (freedom of the press).
For example, we might imagine a young man choosing between being a carpenter or a banker later seeing great significance in his choice to be a banker, but there was not much in his actual judgment at all other than a passing fancy. In this, we see the universality of human beings: the roads leading to carpenter and banker being the same and the carpenters and bankers at the end of them—seeming like people who made significant choices—really being just part of the collective of the human race.
Then is The Road Not Taken not about the question “How to make a difference in the world?” after all? No. It is still about this question. The ending is the clearest and striking part. If nothing else, readers are left with the impression that our narrator, who commands beautiful verse, profound imagery, and time itself (“ages and ages hence”) puts significance on striving to make a disparity.
The striving is reconstituted and complicated here in reflection, but our hero wants to make a difference and so should we. That is why this is a tremendous poem, from a basic or close reading viewpoint.
Source: classicalpoets
- Poem Analysis Of ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost
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