If we stick to the words on the page, the dramatic situation of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken is clear. 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 there are fallen leaves blanketing the two roads. The time is morning and the speaker is afoot rather than in an automobile. He speaks of how “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 chooses 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 and life-changing decision. The most obvious would seem a choice of profession. Other possibilities might be whether or not (or whom) to marry. “Morning” invites the interpretation that the speaker is in young adulthood – the time when such critical choices face most people.
The concluding stanza pivots on the phrase “with a sigh.” The speaker regrets that necessary choices and decisions rule out other pursuits that might well be equally enriching and enjoyable. One can’t do everything.
The danger of 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, or whether or not to join the military and go to war, or to accept Jesus as his Savior seems to be unsupportable by the words of the poem. This verges on the not uncommon perception that a poem can mean anything an individual reader wants it to mean.
It should be borne 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 might be justifiable because of the common associations of the color black. But both roads are fair and grassy. The only difference is the road he chose seemed less often used. The decision to be a poet and an academician rather than a businessman or farmer would be unsupportable.
Ideally, a poem should be viewed in a bell jar without the biographical facts of its creator. However, such is not the case with this poem. Frost is on record as having said, “You have to be careful of that one; it’s a tricky poem – very tricky.”
Frost had a very dear friend and fellow poet, an Englishman named Edward Thomas. While Frost and his wife were living in England, the two men were in the habit of taking long walks together involving deep conversation. Thomas often suggested the route to take and promised the sight of beautiful flowers and the like – sights that were never seen.
Frost kidded his friend saying, “No matter which road you take, you’ll always sigh and wish you had taken another.” Thomas took it all seriously. England had just entered World War I. Thomas was apolitical and anti-war, but he was conflicted by pacifism and the urge to protect his native land. He felt Frost was mocking him for his indecisiveness.
Frost, back in the States and in his earliest success as a poet, sent to Thomas his poem originally titled Two Roads and later The Road Not Taken. “It isn’t me,” Thomas protested. “The sigh,” Frost said, “was a mock sigh, hypocritical for the fun of the thing.”
Thomas was not amused and Frost discovered when reading the poem for a college audience that everyone missed his non-serious fooling in spite of the poet’s playful manner of reading it.
Thomas enlisted and was killed shortly thereafter on Easter Sunday 1917.
1. Reginald L. Cook, "Frost on Frost: The Making of Poems"
2. Cook, "The Dimensions of Robert Frost"
3. Lawrance Thompson, "Robert Frost, The Years of Triumph"
4. D. H. Lawrence, "Studies in Classic American Literature"