The Road Not Taken is Frost poem published in 1915 in the collection

Mountain Interval, it is the first poem in the volume and is printed in italics. The
title is often mistakenly given as "The Road Less Traveled, from the penultimate
line: "I took the one less traveled by". Frost wrote on Bread Loaf Writers
Conference on 23 August 1953 that one stanza of the poem had been written while
he was sitting on a sofa in the middle of England and was found three or four years
later, and he continued, I couldnt bear not to finish it. I wasnt thinking about
myself there, but about a friend who had gone off to war, a person who, whichever
road he went, would be sorry he didnt go the other. He was hard on himself that
way.
The poem has been one of the most analyzed, quoted, and anthologized poems
in the American poetry. It has been and continues to be used as an inspirational
poem, one that seems to be encouraging self-reliance, not following where others
have led (suite101.com). To understand how the poem is structured and organized,
and examine what kinds of effects these forms and devices produce in particular
readers in actual situations, a stylistics analysis is employed. Stylistics is the study
of the language in literature (Toolan, 1990: viii, 32).
Robert Frosts The Road Not Taken is a poem about a decisional crisis.The
narrator comes upon a fork in the road while walking through a yellow wood. He
considers both paths and concludes that each one is equally well-traveled and
appealing. After choosing one of the roads, the narrator tells himself that he will
come back to this fork one day in order to try the other road. However, he realizes
that it is unlikely that he will ever have the opportunity to come back to this specific
point in time because his choice of path will simply lead to other forks in the road
(and other decisions). The narrator ends on a nostalgic note, wondering how
different things would have been had he chosen the other path (GradeSaver LLC.,
2012).
Along with Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, this poem is one of
Frosts most beloved works and is frequently studied in literature classes. Since its
publication, many readers have analyzed the poem as a nostalgic commentary on
life choices. The narrator decided to seize the day and express himself as an
individual by choosing the road that was less traveled by. As a result of this
decision, the narrator claims, his or her life was fundamentally different that it
would have been had he chosen the more frequently-traveled path (ibid). The
following presents the complete stanzas of Frosts 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.


Reference: GradeSaver LCC. 2012. Robert Frost: Summary and Analysis of The
Road Not Taken. Retrieved from www.gradesaver.com/the-poetry-of-robert-
frost/study-guide/section10/ on 9 December 2012 at 1:31.