Everyone is a traveler that chooses their road that leads to their continuous journey of life. Never is there a straight path leading you to a particular direction with a sole purpose, but many different interpretations can be conveyed from the Robert Frost poem, “The Road Not Taken”. In life many different roads can be taken, but many people choose the one more traveled upon although people do choose the less traveled. This poem clearly demonstrates the belief that the road that you choose makes you the man you become.
It is difficult to make a decision on which road to take because there is no way you will find what opportunities and interests will be missed. There is a strong sense of anxiety before a choice is made and it is known that in one lifetime one cannot travel down every path. In an attempt to make a decision, the traveler “looks down one as far as I could. ” The road that will be chosen leads to the unknown, as does any choice in life. As he strains his eyes to see down the path he will never be able to see where the path will take him in his life.
It is the way that he chooses here that sets him off on his journey and decides where he is going. “Then took the other, just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim. ” The word claim is meaning a better view. He chooses this path because “it was grassy and wanted wear. ” When observing the paths it was obvious that that path was not for everyone because it is not as tramped; therefore, he calls it the road less traveled by. The fact that the traveler took this path over the more popular is most likely from the type of personality he has; one that does not want to follow the crowd but wants to do the one that has never been done, the new and different.
“And both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black. ” The leaves still covered the ground since they had fallen because no one had yet taken this road. Perhaps because the leaves are still there is because when people come to the path they are apprehensive on which road to take. They are afraid to take the path that is less traveled. “I kept the first for another day!” The desire to travel down both paths is expressed, but “knowing how way leads on to way,” the speaker of this poem realizes that the decision is not just a temporary one but a permanent one.
This is his common mistake with people because they think they can take back the choices they made before, but the choice will unlikely affect every choice he makes afterward. Once you have performed an act there is no turning back, it cannot be undone. Once again at the end of the poem the regret of the road taken hangs over the traveler. He realizes that at the end of his life, “somewhere ages and ages hence,” he will have regrets about having never gone back and traveling down the roads he did not take. Yet he remains happy about his decision and he realizes it was the path that he chose that made him turn out the way he did. If it wasnt for that decision then he would not have lived the way he did.
“I took the road less traveled by and that had made all the difference. ” To this man, what really made the difference, is that he did what he wanted, he had nobody pushing him and he chose the road less traveled. If he hadnt, he wouldnt be the same man he is now. There are many interpretations to this poem and Robert Frost may have intended this. He may have been trying to achieve a universal understanding.
In other words, there is no judgement, no specificity, and no moral. There is simply a narrator who makes a decision in his life that had changed the direction of his life from what it may have otherwise been. It allows all readers from all different experiences to relate .
