![]() ![]() After all, ‘two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took one of them, and there was absolutely nothing to pick between them’ wouldn’t have made all the difference, for there is no difference. Yet this isn’t true, as the poem’s speaker admits: the two paths are, in fact, equally covered with leaves – one is not ‘less traveled by’ after all, but it suits him to pretend that this was so, as a way of justifying his decision to take one road over the other. ![]() Frost’s narrator comes to a fork in the road and, lamenting the fact that he has to choose between them, takes ‘the one less traveled by’. The way the poem is often summarised – eliding the subtle self-commentary that the poem’s speaker provides – offers a clue to this interpretive misfire. Why is it, then, that many readers apparently misinterpret ‘The Road Not Taken’? How should we analyse Frost’s poem, and how have we been getting it wrong? They don’t need paraphrasing: they’re plain as day. Not how the above paraphrase-as-summary turns into more or less word-for-word recital of Frost’s words in those final few lines of the poem. David Orrs The Road Not Taken dives directly into the controversy, illuminating the poems enduring greatness while revealing its mystifying contradictions. In the future I’ll tell people, with a sigh, that two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by, and that’s made all the difference.’ But in reality, knowing that one road tends to lead onto another, I doubted whether I would ever come back to this spot. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood. I decided to come back another day and take the other path, the road I hadn’t taken. ![]() Both of the roads were covered with leaves and there was no sign, on the morning I passed through that way, that anyone had walked either path yet that day. Though actually, if I’m honest, both paths were as worn as each other, suggesting that both roads were really about equal in terms of how many people had passed along them. And it seemed to be preferable, perhaps, because it wasn’t as well-trodden as the other – its grass was less worn. After spending a good while looking down one of the roads as far as I could see, I then took the other road, since it seemed just as nice. But obviously that wasn’t an option, so I spent a long while standing there and deliberating which to choose. ‘I came to a fork in the road in the yellow wood through which I was travelling, and wished I could have travelled both paths. Rather than offer a summary of ‘The Road Not Taken’, we’ll undertake a brief paraphrase of the poem’s meaning. ![]()
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