Interpreting "The Road Not Taken" By Robert Frost

1645 Words7 Pages
Interpreting "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost "The Road Not Taken" seems to speak of a person making decisions in life based on following their own desires rather than following the path that most commonly taken. It is about taking risks in life and not being afraid to go in directions that others would not normally go. However, in reviewing the analysis of others, I find that my interpretation of the meaning of this poem is very different from what the speaker may have intended. In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker talks of two roads that he has come upon in the woods and his regret that he must chose one. Alone, he stands looking down the one path that seems to be the one taken by those who came before him. I interpret this to represent choices that are made in life. When someone must make decisions in life they are faced with choosing to go in a direction that is safe and conforms with what others would do or they may take risks and go in a direction that is different and more challenging. It is this choice that the speaker finds himself facing in the first stanza. Faced with making a decision on which road to take, the speaker uses the second stanza to talk about choosing the road less taken by others. The first line states that, after equal or "fair" consideration, he chose to take the other road rather than the more worn path in the first stanza. Line two of the second stanza speaks of "having perhaps the better claim" which I interpret to mean the choice best suited for the speaker; however, that choice seems to be determined more by the speaker's need to go in a different direction than by his true desires when he says that the path he chose "was grassy and wanted wear." Did the speaker choose this path primarily because he did not want to conform? It also seems that he finds this different direction to be not as different as

More about Interpreting "The Road Not Taken" By Robert Frost

Open Document