Roads, Taken and Not

A sermon I heard this morning began with a misinterpretation of Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”—which, I contend, is one of the most misunderstood poems in the United States.

Here’s the poem, which I’m sure virtually all of my readers have read before:

The Road Not Taken

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.

Arch Words Analysis:

This is often read as a poem about the importance of making the right choice; most people seem to interpret this as a poem about a traveler who chooses, in the title of M. Scott Peck’s bestseller, “The Road Less Traveled.” (Note that this is not the title of Frost’s poem.) The assumption is that taking the less-traveled path is a good thing, and it has made a significant difference in the narrator’s life.

This misinterpretation is probably due in part to the contrast in the Christian Bible between the narrow path to salvation and the broad path to destruction (Matthew 7:13: “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat”). While this interpretation is therefore familiar and comfortable to many people, it does not seem to be what Frost is saying.

You have to answer one main question in order to understand this poem: What is the difference between the two paths?

Look back at the second stanza. In the first line, the narrator says the second path is “just as fair.” In the second and third lines, the narrator says that one of the paths seems to be not as worn as the other—but then, in the following two lines, he contradicts himself again and says they were worn “really about the same.” Then the first line of the third stanza says the two paths “equally lay”; they’re also covered with untrodden leaves, which would make the wear difficult to ascertain.

So which is it? Are they the worn the same or not? Most of the lines support the reading that the paths are equal, although the narrator seems ambivalent and conflicted about what to believe.

When does the narrator think he will finally make up his mind about the paths? Not in the moment of decision, but “ages and ages hence,” when looking back over his choice. It is only in old age that he will decide his choice has made “all the difference” in his life—and his sigh while saying so suggests that the difference is not entirely positive.

Sometimes, we have clear choices between salvation and destruction—but this poem is not about those times. The narrator has difficulty deciding which path is better, but there is no decisive evidence from the poem that one path is in fact better than the other. Instead, this is a poem about how choices we make shape our lives. I can think of many times in my life I’ve had to choose between two equal paths. When I stopped teaching, for example, the lines “sorry that I could not travel both / And be one traveler” came to mind. When we commit to a choice, we eliminate all the other choices we could have made. As one traveler, I can only go down one path at a time--which, if I think about it too much, can lead to ambivalence and a sense of loss.

This poem is also about the stories we construct about our choices. The narrator anticipates that in old age, he will see his choice of path as both crucial to his life (having made “all the difference) and a source of regret (thus his sigh). The very title of the poem suggests his ambivalence about the choice and his inability to stop thinking of the path he did not choose.

The common misreading of this poem as a traveler choosing between a good path and a bad path shows our longing to have choices be clear-cut. Instead, the narrator shows us the difficulty of deciding between two equal paths, knowing that both will shape us differently.

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For a slightly different take on this poem, you can read biographer Lawrence Thompson’s thoughts here. Evidently, Frost warned audiences, “You have to be careful of that one; it’s a trick poem – very tricky.”