TheRoad Not Taken

A detailed Summary of TheRoad Not Taken

If a person claims that Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" is a tremendous inspiration to them, they probably do not understand the poem as well as they think they do. "The Road Not Taken" could be one of the most misunderstood poems ever written. The popular interpretation glorifies the speaker's decision to choose one path in a forest over another path, and his decision being to travel the "one less traveled." This choice is usually considered a bold move symbolic of the speaker making a cautious decision in his life to break from the crowd and try something different. However, a careful reading of the poem reveals problems with the common analysis that can be solved through analysis of the character of the speaker and the aspects of Frost's word choices.

The title is the first part of the poem that signals the popular analysis is incorrect. Frost's choice to title the poem "The Road Not Taken" gives the reader a negative feeling because the road described is the one "not taken" as opposed to the one the speaker actually did take. The opening line of the poem states "two roads diverged in a yellow wood." Why did the speaker describe the woods as yellow? Yellow in this sense might sig

The last stanza begins "I shall be telling this with a sigh / Ages and ages hence." This indicates that the speaker anticipates he will tell his story in the future. Why would he already predict sharing the story later in life? The speaker could see the possibility of a great story to tell about the day he took the so-called "road less traveled" and appear to be a confident traveler in the road of life. Also, the speaker says he will tell the story "with a sigh." The reader wonders why he looks back "with a sigh." In this case, the sigh could be to look wiser in front of his audience he envisions being present when he retells his story. It might be his way of adding a dramatic pause for a chance to fondly remember his choice. A small detail that disproves the popular interpretation occurs in the retelling at the end of the poem. The traveler does not describe the woods as "yellow" as he had previously done; he simply states that "two roads diverged in a wood." Leaving yellow out of the retelling signifies that he is trying to repeat the story to appear more courageous than he was when he made the decision between the two roads. The last two lines read "I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference." Remembering the discrepancy in the middle two stanzas when the speaker first says one path is more worn than the other, then contradict

Some common words found in the essay are:
Robert Frost's, Road Traveled, Real Road, popular interpretation, poem road, roads diverged, describe woods yellow, frost's poem, describe woods, road traveled, title poem, tell story, woods yellow, life speaker,

Approximate Word count = 929
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English