The Road Not Taken

Finding America in the Poem 

Everyone

Loves

and Almost

Everyone

Gets Wrong

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN (A Poem) by Robert Frost [with analysis]

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The road not taken… (From … http://dennydelivery.blogspot.com/)

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.

- Robert Frost

"The Road Not Taken" is a series of such masks. Though the poem is(to an extent) about Edward Thomas, the "I" of the poem isn't purely Thomas anymore than the "I" of, say, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowny Evening" is Frost. Rather, Frost gives us a speaker whose identity--whose self--is an interplay of questions about personhood. As the poem progresses, these questions emerge in the uncertain ground between the poem's popular interpretation and its more critically acceptable reading. The former imagines a self that is unified and authentic -- a self that has chosen the less traveled road to emerge in its full splendor. The latter presupposes a fragmentary, improvisational sort of self that is unsure of its own choices, aware of its tendency to invent explanattions for events over which it has no control, and skeptical for its future stability.

In keeping with his usual habits, Frost provides support both positions, and potential responses for nearly all questions that anyone might ask. But this isn't just any poem. It's "The Road Not Taken" and it plays a unique role not simply in American literature, but in American culture--and in world culture as well.

As the study puts it: 

The Americans chose statements emphasizing two categories--personal attributes and uniqueness--significantly more than the Japanese. The Japanese, however, chose statements emphasizing four categories--athlete's coach, and team, motivation, emotion, and doubt--significantly more than the Americans.

"Personal attributes and uniqueness" are the hallmarks of the American who has taken less traveled road, whether in a poem or on a podium. After all no matter WHAT ONE THINKS is the primary meaning of "The Road Not Taken," it's hard to miss the fact that there are no other people in it. Even in the closing stanza, when the speaker announces, "I shall be telling this," he never says to whom he'll be doing the telling.

It seems as likely as anything else that he'll be talking to himself, like an authentic American.