preview

Robert Frost The Road Not Taken Analysis Essay

Decent Essays

“I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference (Frost, 19-20).” Many individuals take these infamous last two lines from Robert Frost’s classic poem “The Road Not Taken,” and completely disregard the rest of the literary piece. Much of society thinks that it’s the road they take that makes them different and stand apart from everybody else. They believe that their uniqueness relies on this ultimate decision of which road they go down. Frost, however, thinks the exact opposite of this. Frost believes that each person’s path is unique because everyone makes their own string of decisions to get to a certain point.

In the first stanza, the speaker is faced between two diverged paths. The speaker wants to travel down both, but knows he cannot; therefor, he contemplates which is the better decision. He even tries to look down each one, but cannot see the end of the tunnel. The speaker finally decides to take one that is …show more content…

“Way leads on to way,” or decisions lead to decisions (Frost, 14). This is why the speakers says, "I doubted if I should ever come back (frost, 15)." As decisions piles up, one may not have the opportunity to go back and go down a different road. Luckily, the path itself is not special in any way. They both are equally as good, and equally as untraveled. So whichever one we take is irrelevant in the end. What truly matters are the choices we make along the way. These choices are what separates society into singular individuals. All sequences of choices are different; henceforth, every person’s path is different from the next. If all paths are different in their own way, does anyone actually stand out in the end? This declaration may take away a little bit of one’s sense of purpose because they see that they inevitably lack individuality. As human beings, we yearn to stand out, but readings like this minimize our hopes for that because it makes it seem impossible in the

Get Access