Road Not Taken

A detailed Summary of Road Not Taken

Everyone is a traveler, choosing the roads to follow on the map of their continuous life. A straight path never leaves speaker with one sole direction on which to travel. Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" is about how the choices affect speaker's life. Frost illustrates speaker to make a difficult decision about choosing one of two equally promising roads to travel on. When speaker comes to a fork road, a decision needs to be made. Both paths are different and choosing the right one will depend on his past experience. It is this way that he chooses to decide where he is going to travel. Throughout this poem, it is obvious that decisions are not easy to make, and each decision will lead him down a different road to travel. In any case however, this poem clearly demonstrates Frost's belief that it is the road that speaker chooses that makes him who he is.

The speaker had two roads to choose from and wonders what would have happened if he had taken the other road. The poem begins with simple sentence, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood," as the speaker sees two roads before him and obviously he cannot travel on both at the same time. He tries to consider the consequences as he "looked down one as far as I could."

However, each road "bent in the undergrowth" as where each road obviously different. It is unclear to him what the consequences would be if he chooses either road. Frost states "And sorry I could not travel both," that shows the point in which speaker will choose only one path in which to travel on. It is always difficult to make a decision, because it is impossible not to wonder what will be missed out. There is a strong sense of wonder before the choice is made because he knows that in one lifetime he cannot travel down on every road. In an attempt to make a decision, the speaker "looked down one as far as I could". The road he chooses leads to the unknown choice in life. In the first stanza, the emphasis is on the road that was not traveled, but he cannot "and be one traveler" on both paths. The speaker has a difficult choice to make and is carefully considering his options, but he must choose one of the roads to travel.

It appears that the last stanza is written long after he makes his decision. He looks back and regrets his decision, "I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence." He again makes an excuse why he chose this particular road as he "took the one less traveled by" even though; in line he admits that both roads are really the same. The speaker seems to be content with his choice, yet he tells it with a sigh. He is resolving himself to the fact that even when "ages and ages" pass, he will still wonder what if he had taken the other road. He will regret being unable to go back and travel down the road he

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Approximate Word count = 1054
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English