"The Road Not Taken"

David Orr in his book "The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong" analyzes the poem in depth. The poem is shown below for reference.

Orr believes most readers wrongly interpret the poem. He says, "Most readers consider "The Road Not Taken" to be a paean to triumphant self-assertion ("I took the one less traveled by"), but the literal meaning of the poem's own lines seems completely at odds with this interpretation. The poem's speaker tells us he "shall be telling," at some point in the future, of how he took the road less traveled by, yet he has already admitted that the two paths "equally lay / In leaves" and "the passing there / Had worn them really about the same." So the road he will later call less traveled is actually the road equally traveled. The two roads are interchangeable. According to this reading, then, the speaker will be claiming "ages and ages hence" that his decision made "all the difference" only because this is the kind of claim we make when we want to comfort or blame ourselves by assuming that our current position is the product of our own choices . . . . The poem isn't a salute to can-do individualism; it's a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives (9)."  Orr later explains that "all the difference" could mean "a great deal of difference," but it could also mean "no difference whatsoever (145)."

The title, "The Road Not Taken" and the poetic lines "Oh, I kept the first for another day! / Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back." not only emphasize the road foregone, but imply it will remain in the past. "Somewhere ages and ages hence:" we each forget that we chose from what appeared to be two identical roads and romanticize it to the road that was the "one less traveled by," and invoke in that choice a "difference" that has been life altering in a positive way.

The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963

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.