POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES

Maragondon Annex – Alfonso Campus

Mangas II, Alfonso, Cavite

POEM
ANALYSIS
(The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost)

PREPARED BY:
Ariel R. Binauhan
BSE II- ENGLISH
 The Road Not Taken

BY ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 In the poem, a traveler is reflecting on a recent decision that he has made as well as
looking ahead in anticipation of his future reminiscences about the event. He was faced with a
choice between two apparently identical paths, neither of which had been used that day, and
required to choose one while telling him that he could always come back to the other. Still, he
does not expect to return, instead he contemplates how this decision will look, “…ages and ages
hence…” and decides that he will remember his choice as taking the road less traveled.

The familiarity of the situation immediately strikes me. Being faced with two paths and
equipped only with the knowledge that I could only choose one is frustrating. The traveler’s
pause to analyze the situation is completely understandable; I also try to “look ahead” whenever
faced with a choice. However, the disappearance of the path as it winds into the undergrowth
often happens much too soon.

“The Road Not Taken” is one of Robert Frost’s most familiar and most popular poems. It
is made up of four stanzas of five lines each, and each line has between eight and ten syllables in
a roughly iambic rhythm; the lines in each stanza rhyme in an abaab pattern. The popularity of
the poem is largely a result of the simplicity of its symbolism: The speaker must choose between
diverging paths in a wood, and he sees that choice as a metaphor for choosing between different
directions in life. Nevertheless, for such a seemingly simple poem, it has been subject to very
different interpretations of how the speaker feels about his situation and how the reader is to
view the speaker. In 1961, Frost himself commented that “The Road Not Taken” is “a tricky
poem, very tricky.” Frost wrote the poem in the first person, which raises the question of whether
the speaker is the poet himself or a persona, a character created for the purposes of the poem.
According to the Lawrence Thompson biography, Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph (1971),
Frost would often introduce the poem in public readings by saying that the speaker was based on
his Welsh friend Edward Thomas. In Frost’s words, Thomas was “a person who, whichever road
he went, would be sorry he didn’t go the other.”

In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker, while walking on an autumn day in a forest
where the leaves have changed to yellow, must choose between two paths that head in different
directions. He regrets that he cannot follow both roads, but since that is not possible, he pauses
for a long while to consider his choice. In the first stanza and the beginning of the second, one
road seems preferable; however, by the beginning of the third stanza he has decided that the
paths are roughly equivalent. Later in the third stanza, he tries to cheer himself up by reassuring
himself that he will return someday and walk the other road.

At the end of the third stanza and in the fourth, however, the speaker resumes his initial tone of
sorrow and regret. He realizes that he probably will never return to walk the alternate path, and
in the fourth stanza he considers how the choice he must make now will look to him in the
future. The speaker believes that when he looks back years later, he will see that he had actually
chosen the “less traveled” road. He also thinks that he will later realize what a large difference
this choice has made in his life. Two important details suggest that the speaker believes that he
will later regret having followed his chosen road: One is the idea that he will “sigh” as he tells
this story, and the other is that the poem is entitled “The Road Not Taken”—implying that he
will never stop thinking about the other path he might have followed.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

The two roads symbolize, obviously, the choices that the speaker faces in life. He cannot
take both, as much as he would like to, so he spends time in contemplation and observation. He
cannot see far, not far enough to make a confident decision as to the better nature of one over the
other. The fact that it is a "yellow wood" perhaps indicates that, as fall is often a symbol of the
waning years of one's life, the speaker is past his youth, when he can make a choice with the
confidence that it is correctible at a later time. The choice he makes will be permanent, highly
impacting the rest of his fast-disappearing days. As one approaches middle age, he comes to grip
with the fact that his time for hopes and dreams is past; he must come to grips with the reality
created by the choices he has made.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

Here the speaker seems to be contradictory. He has made a choice, but is still unsure
about it. It is "just as fair" yet it has "the better claim." Then again, there is no appreciable
difference as the "passing there / had worn them really about the same." He is still trying to
convince himself that either choice would have been acceptable (just in case this path proves ill-
advised). He cannot quite make up his mind about the wisdom of his decision.
 And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

The speaker is still in the process of convincing himself, even to the point of self-
delusion. He tries to tell himself that, should this road proves not the right one, he will have the
chance to go back to take the other road. Yet, in a road of complete honesty, he knows that life
will probably not allow him the choice to return, even if he should wish to. He has transitioned to
the point where he realizes that his youth is past and he must take up the responsibility and
reality of adulthood.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

He has come to the decision that, for good or ill, the choice he has made will be permanent and
highly effecting of his life. He looks ahead to time when he can look back and tell that the
choice he made, whether wisely or unwisely, was the point at which his life's path was set. The
Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost is a poem narrated by a lone traveler confronted with two
roads, symbolizing the journey of life and the decisions we make on that journey. The narrator
chose the path that was 'grassy and wanted wear,' which demonstrates the desire many of us have
for individuality and adventure.

There are multiple poetic devices used in Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken. In
the first line, the poet used assonance. Assonance is the repetition of a vowel sound within a line
of poetry. In the first line, two roads diverged in a yellow wood; the "o" sound is repeated in
"roads" and "yellow."

In the eighth line, because it was grassy and wanted wear, the author uses personification.
Personification is the giving of human characteristics to non-human/non-living things. In this
line, the path wanted wear. A path cannot want. Only humans can want. This qualifies as
personification.
 The poem as a whole is a metaphor. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or
phrase is applied to a person, idea, or object to which it is not literally applicable. The poet is,
therefore, comparing the paths in life to the choices one must make when reaching a crossroads.
The poem speaks of the actual choices in life as roads one must choose to take. Metaphorically,
the roads simply represent choices in life.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken

https://m.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/road-not-taken

https://m.poets.org/academy-american-poets/mission-history