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The dramatic situation of The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost, is clear and easily stated. All readers say to themselves, "Yes, I've been in that situation and had to make a similar choice." The speaker of the four stanzas of iambic tetrameter describes walking in the woods and arriving at a fork in the road. Presumably it is autumn since the wood is yellow, and fallen leaves blanket the two roads. The time is morning and the speaker is afoot, not in an automobile. He remarks that "no step had trodden black" the leaves that cover both roads.

"And sorry I could not travel both/ And be one traveler," he considers long and makes a choice. The road he selects is "grassy and wanted wear." He thinks someday he might come back and walk the other road, "Yet knowing how way leads on to way,/ I doubted if I should ever come back."

Clearly, the choice of road taken and not taken symbolizes an important, life-changing decision. The first kind that comes to mind is a choice of profession. Other possibilities might be whether or not (or whom) to marry. "Morning" suggests the speaker is in young adulthood, the age when such critical choices face most people. This symbolic interpretation of time of day to time of life is reasonable and has ample precedent. To insist, for instance, that "morning" is a pun on "mourning" would not be at all plausible since nothing else in the poem suggests that the speaker is sorrowing.

The concluding stanza pivots on the phrase "with a sigh." The speaker regrets that life's choices and decisions rule out alternatives that might be equally enriching and enjoyable. One can't do everything.

The danger inherent in symbolic poetry is that people often place unrealistic interpretations on the symbol. For instance, to interpret this speaker's choice as a life of honesty rather than a criminal career, whether to join the military and go to war, or to accept Jesus as his Savior is not supportable by the words of the poem. This raises the timeless debate of whether a poem can mean anything an individual reader wants it to mean.

Bear in mind that both roads appear equally inviting. If the speaker had said that the leaves of one road HAD been trodden black, the argument that in that direction lies evil or criminality would be supportable because of the negative associations of the color black. But both roads are fair and grassy. The only stated difference is that the road he chose seemed less often used. If we allow biographical factors of the poem's author

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