Rethinking the Road

During football playoff season, there are invariably advertisements (usually for cars) that say something about “the road not taken,” insisting that we should all follow the least populated route, and implying that Robert Frost would have been proud of us for going it alone and forging our own way. In fact, it has become something of an over-trodden path to insist on “the road not taken.”

Except that Frost didn’t say that. I think the poem’s message is even more wonderful and also a bit more complicated than we as a society have realized, and I would like to spend a little time looking at what the poem actually says.

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.

For me, the beauty and complexity of the poems rests in the last stanza’s phrase, “and I—”, with the em-dash signifying a pause, a hesitation of some sort. Why would the speaker hesitate? 

Frost always said, and commentators repeat, that the poem was written somewhat in jest, to make fun of a friend who had an impossible time deciding what path to take during walks, and who would come to regret not having chosen another path. It was perhaps a fun joke, though there is a little snarkiness in writing a whole poem to make fun of a friend. But the poem is not really funny—or, at least, I have never read it that way. 

The speaker says that he took “the other” path, which he says might have been slightly less worn, but he immediately corrects himself to note that “the passing there/ Had worn them really about the same,/ And both that morning equally lay/ In leaves no step had trodden black.” They are really not that different, after all. So the whole power of the poem is in that last stanza, when the speaker imagines a future self talking about this choice, and imagining that he will tell his story “with a sigh.” Leaving aside the possible ridiculousness of telling a whole story about a simple walk in the woods on a leaf-strewn path, why would the speaker sigh? And then why hesitate?

I think there are generally two readings of this moment: one is that the speaker imagines genuinely regretting his choice. But the one I much prefer is that he has made something of his choice—he has decided to characterize his path as “the one less traveled by” (which it wasn’t) and to say that “that has made all the difference.” 

When I was young, “The Road Not Taken” was another apparently simple poem that teachers made me pore over, much to my annoyance. I thought, who even cares what his future self says? But now, having spent decades making meaning through events and relationships, the phrase “and I—” strikes me differently. It is poignant, bittersweet, and empowering all at once. The speaker imagines a future self who chooses to make that silly little walk into something determinative in his life story. He will choose to say he went the less popular route. He will choose to say he has not conformed. 

All of which leads me to the em-dash. Projecting a future self who hesitates about the causal narratives in his life, the speaker tells us two things: 1) we will misrepresent the facts of our past; and 2) we will use that misrepresentation to tell a better, more interesting story about who we are and how we got here. So maybe the speaker is planning to lie—maybe he hesitates to allow himself to commit to that lie—but, honestly, is that so bad? If he is telling a young person that choosing nonconformity is the better route, then great. If he is telling himself that his life has developed meaningfully because of that choice, then also great. 

A life is full of innumerable moments of choice and action. Even a single day has so many options we are often weary, by evening-time, of making decisions. We can never know in the moment which actions will come to dominate subsequent actions, or which particular moments will live vividly in our memories and return to us when we are much older. Supposedly I chose my high school because I saw the name on a t-shirt someone was wearing—maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t, but to this day I am unfazed by whimsical choices, even significant ones. I have seen data that shows a strong correlation between success in high school or college and the student’s having chosen that school, for whatever reason—weather, the tour guide, the engineering program, the food. Simply having chosen predisposes the student to support that choice over time through narratives about its appropriateness for them. 

And having spent some time with Frost’s poem has also had its benefits—a chance to rethink my own narrative, a reminder that meaning is made by us and is not given, a realization that there are infinite wonderful paths. And, very likely, “the passing there [will wear] them really about the same.”