The more difficult road, however, may produce a less predictable outcome yet perhaps a more fulfilling and individual one. The choice is clear but not at all simple: the common, easy path or the unusual, more challenging path? The first road might prove more reliable, even reassuring, for others have gone that way. Similarly, both roads diverge into ‘a yellow wood’ – Vermont in all its Autumnal glory! The first path, however, is a more popular route, while the other less-traveled path is overgrown and ‘wanted wear’. It is, in other words, impossible to foresee what future may lie ahead – and Frost did not seem to have the luxury of a Change-of-Mind slip! At first, each alternative is equally appealing or ‘just as fair’. But his view is limited by the bend as the track veers into the undergrowth. He looks down both paths, ‘as far as I could’ in an attempt to see what they might offer. The poet considers his options carefully. So, therefore, the moment described so beautifully in the poem could be such a moment in anyone’s life. Great poetry and literature have always given us many examples where life is seen in terms of a journey on which we will meet many twists and turns. However, if these paths are seen in a symbolic or allegoric way, then the choice is more challenging. If taken on a literal level, the choice is simply the path along which to continue. Your choice may affect your life for many years and so you tend to take time and effort in arriving at that decision. If you consider, briefly, some decisions you make in your own life, you know that you might make hundreds of choices in any one day, most without even noticing! Deciding where to go for lunch is usually not too difficult however, a much more difficult decision is the career to follow after your Leaving Cert or A Levels. This is what makes the decision so difficult. This mirrors the poet’s dilemma in the poem and he faces a difficult decision that has to be made for the moment, yet may have repercussions that last a lifetime.
Imagine walking through beautiful woodland in upstate New York or Vermont as the Fall takes hold and imagine at this moment, the route on which you travel diverges into two separate paths. In the poem, the speaker, whom we can assume is Robert Frost himself, is faced with a choice that appears quite suddenly as he walks along a forest track. Then again not all journeys are easily mapped and some take place off-road! This lyric poem, a first-person narrative tale, describes a key moment in the poet’s life.
‘The Road not Taken’ has always been a very popular poem and despite 21st Century developments such as Google Maps and iPhones and Sat Navs it still bears a relevance for the modern reader.
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