The Road Not Taken

Making Our Own Meaning While Exploring the Rich Ambiguity of Poetry

Commentary by d.c. buschmann

I'm always amazed at the number of equally-bright people who can come up with such vastly different views about Frost's meaning in this poem. Readers are fascinated by it. Did he intend to teach us a lesson, or was he spoofing us tongue-in-cheek? The truth is we can't know precisely what Frost was thinking when he wrote it or exactly what he meant. 

What makes it great is all the things it makes us think about when we read it -- the self-reflection, the self-analysis, the what ifs. I enjoyed reading the excerpt David Fried sent me the next day after discussing the poem on a LinkedIn poetry group, from Commentary on "The Road Not Taken"  but I still think it's hard to know exactly what he meant when he wrote it or if it took on a life of its own and then morphed into its current form. Probably the latter, if I had to guess.

If you read the commentary, it points out the fact that Frost tells you three times, in three different ways, that the paths were about equally worn. Then, at the end, he muses about looking back someday, saying he took the one less traveled. WHAT???? 

Reminds me of the Beatles' song, "Something." Everyone thinks it's a love song. Have you listened to the words closely? You might want to listen again. Where in there does George Harrison say he's anything other than obsessed or infatuated with Pattie Boyd? He does say that she asks him if he thinks his love will grow [for her] and he says he doesn't know. Dum. Dum. Dum. Duh. Dum. Is it really a love song?

This is why I love Frost. You can read him, talk about him, and think about his poems forever and never tire of him. I see different aspects of my life, of life in general, every time I read him. He's intellectual, but he's not. What does he really mean? It's your call. What does it really matter? That mental exercise you just experienced ... trying to figure it out ... that's why he's, well -- Frost.


The Road Not Taken

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 marked 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. 

Robert Frost