robert frost summary of the road not taken

The Road Not Taken Summary & Analysis by Robert Frost

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
• Poetic Devices
• Vocabulary & References
• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
• Line-by-Line Explanations

Written in 1915 in England, "The Road Not Taken" is one of Robert Frost's—and the world's—most well-known poems. Although commonly interpreted as a celebration of rugged individualism, the poem actually contains multiple different meanings. The speaker in the poem, faced with a choice between two roads, takes the road "less traveled," a decision which he or she supposes "made all the difference." However, Frost creates enough subtle ambiguity in the poem that it's unclear whether the speaker's judgment should be taken at face value, and therefore, whether the poem is about the speaker making a simple but impactful choice, or about how the speaker interprets a choice whose impact is unclear.

• Read the full text of “The Road Not Taken”

The Full Text of “The Road Not Taken”

1 Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

2 And sorry I could not travel both

3 And be one traveler, long I stood

4 And looked down one as far as I could

5 To where it bent in the undergrowth;

6 Then took the other, as just as fair,

7 And having perhaps the better claim,

8 Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

9 Though as for that the passing there

10 Had worn them really about the same,

11 And both that morning equally lay

12 In leaves no step had trodden black.

13 Oh, I kept the first for another day!

14 Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

15 I doubted if I should ever come back.

16 I shall be telling this with a sigh

17 Somewhere ages and ages hence:

18 Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

19 I took the one less traveled by,

20 And that has made all the difference.

“The Road Not Taken” Summary

“the road not taken” themes.

Choices and Uncertainty

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Individualism and Nonconformity

Making Meaning

Line-by-line explanation & analysis of “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.

Lines 13-15

Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

Lines 16-17

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Lines 18-20

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

“The Road Not Taken” Symbols

Diverging Roads

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The Road Less Traveled

“the road not taken” poetic devices & figurative language, extended metaphor.

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“The Road Not Taken” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Yellow wood
• Undergrowth
• See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Road Not Taken”

Rhyme scheme, “the road not taken” speaker, “the road not taken” setting, literary and historical context of “the road not taken”, more “the road not taken” resources, external resources.

"The Most Misread Poem in America" — An insightful article in the Paris Review, which goes into depth about some of the different ways of reading (or misreading) "The Road Not Taken."

Robert Frost reads "The Road Not Taken" — Listen to Robert Frost read the poem.

Book Review: "The Road Not Taken," by David Orr — Those looking for an even more in-depth treatment of the poem might be interested in David Orr's book, "The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong."

LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Frost

Acquainted with the Night

After Apple-Picking

Desert Places

Dust of Snow

Fire and Ice

Home Burial

Mending Wall

My November Guest

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

The Death of the Hired Man

The Oven Bird

The Sound of the Trees

The Tuft of Flowers

The Wood-Pile

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• The Road Not Taken

Read below our complete notes on the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. Our notes cover The Road Not Taken summary, themes, and a detailed literary analysis.

Background of the Poem

“The Road Not Taken” is a poem by Robert Frost. It was published in The Atlantic Monthly in August 1915. This poem was used as an opening poem of Robert Frost’s collection Mountain Interval in 1916. It presents a narrator who is recalling his journey through the forest when he had to choose between two divergent roads. This poem is one of the most well-known and most often misunderstood poems of Robert Frost. 

Frost’s Inspiration for “The Road Not Taken”

The inspiration of “The Road Not Taken” came when Frost noticed a familiar habit of his close friend in England, Edward Thomas. Frost used to frequently take long walks with Thomas through the countryside. Edward Thomas, an English-Welsh poet, would always regret not taking the other path. Thomas would always sigh over what they would have seen if they had taken the other path. Thomas would think that if they had chosen the other path, it might have offered them many opportunities to see and experience nature. 

At such times of regret, Frost would always tell Thomas that “It does not matter what road you take. You will always regret and wish you had taken the other one.” In this way, Frost wrote this poem to be a light-hearted one but it turned to be more serious and ambiguous for readers. 

Historical Context

There were different historically significant events going on in 1916. Therefore, it is not possible to identify one specific meaning as the one that the poet had in mind. When this poem was written, things of great importance were occurring in the poet’s life and social order. Firstly, in 1916, an act of Congress made “The National Park Services” to keep millions of acres of the forest land safe for the enjoyment of future generations. 

Secondly, Albert Einstein came up with his theory of relativity which claimed that things are dependent on relative circumstances and not on absolute knowledge. The end result of any choice that a person makes is not absolute. This affected the thinking of people to a great extent. They started treating events and feelings relative. The pleasing connection with nature and one’s personal feelings regarding one’s future are the main subjects of this poem. 

Industrial Revolution and World War I

The industrial revolution in the late 1800s brought advances in international commerce through advances in travel and communication. It became difficult for economic powers like the U.S. and Japan to stay uninvolved. The American public wanted no involvement in World War I. It was a year after this poem was published when America had to choose between joining the war. 

When Frost and his family went home, England was already at war. The central subject of “The Road Not Taken” reflects the position of the two countries where Frost had lived. Britain joined other countries in the fight and America tried to stay away from it. Each side has a good reason to choose their path and face the consequences. 

Urbanization

The relation between people and society is the central core of “The Road Not Taken.” The poet asks the question of whether one must follow the footsteps of the majority or the least traveled path. In 1916, this question was part of the debate. Industrialization was the dominant social force in the last half of the nineteenth-century. 

As factories went up, people came to cities to get jobs. Immigrants from other countries came for the same reason. The cities started to construct new quarters for the coming families. These living quarters were made together on top of one another. It created a frustrating situation for those people who came from open lands. 

By 1916, artists, philosophers, and other sensitive people started questioning the depersonalizing effects of urbanization and industrialization. They were worried about the situation that has changed the nature of human thinking. People followed what the majority was doing and they lost connection with themselves and nature as well. They couldn’t decide on their own and they relied on others for prosperity. This poem raises the question regarding individuality and independence. 

The Road Not Taken Summary

The speaker of the poem walks through a forest where trees have shed their yellow leaves in autumn. He reaches a junction where the road becomes two diverging roads. The speaker is one person; therefore, he regrets that he cannot travel both roads. He stands at the fork in the road for a long time. He tries to see where one of the paths does go. The speaker cannot see very far because the forest is dense. Also, the road is not straight. 

The speaker then takes the other path. He judges the second path as good a choice as the first one. He considers it a better option of the two since it is grassy. The path chosen by the speaker is also less worn than the first path. When the speaker starts walking on the second road, he thinks that the two paths are more or less equally ragged. 

The speaker recalls that both roads were covered with leaves in the morning. These leaves had not been yet turned black by foot walks. He exclaims that he is saving the first road and will travel it some other day. Immediately, the speaker contradicts his statement with the recognition that in one’s life, one road leads to another road. Therefore, it is unlikely to say that he will ever get a chance to come back to the first road. 

The speaker visualizes his distant future when he will be narrating, with a sigh, the story of his choosing which road to travel. The speaker speaks as if he is looking back from his future at the present choice. He says that he had to choose between two roads, and he chose the one which was less traveled. The speaker from the future says that the result of that selection between roads has made all the differences in the speaker’s life. 

Themes in the Poem

The central theme of the poem appears when the speaker faces crossroads. The first line of the poem says that “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” It is a classic conceit for a life decision. The speaker then begins to consider the two options. He tries to select a better choice. However, Frost’s poem claims that our choices are less real than we think. Our power to perceive meaningful differences among options is negligible—the two roads are “as just as fair.” 

According to the poem, fate constantly guides us to take a step forward despite our attempts to exercise free will. Our choices fall inferior to our fate which decides all.

Choices and Uncertainty

In “The Road Not Taken,” the speaker describes himself as a confused person who is facing a situation to choose between two roads. The speaker’s choice acts as an extended metaphor for all the choices that every individual must make in life. Through the speaker’s experience, the poem describes the nature of choices and the situation when a person is forced to choose.

The speaker’s first emotion is “sorrow,” as he regrets the reality that it is impossible to “travel both” roads or to experience both things. The poem explores that every choice demands the loss of opportunity. Also, choices are painful because they are made with incomplete information. 

The speaker seeks to collect as much information as possible by observing “down one (road) as far as I could.” However, there is a limit to what the speaker can see and the rest of the things are out of his sight. The speaker has not enough information about which one path is the right one. No one can truly predict what each choice will bring. This poem reflects the anxiety that everyone experiences whenever they step forward on a new road in life. 

After making a final choice, one loses the opportunity to experience the things that are not chosen. The choice of one thing cuts off the knowledge of the alternate choice. It leaves one with uncertainty and they never know if they had made the right choice.

The final line of the poem is a reminder that one’s choices in life make all the difference. It is the choice that gives identity to a person. 

I ndividualism and nonconformity 

In “The Road Not Taken,” the speaker has to choose between two roads. He chooses the one which is less traveled. The choice between the two roads can be treated as a conventional choice versus unconventional choice. By selecting the less-traveled path, the speaker shows that he values individualism over conformity

While deciding which road to take, the speaker notes that the second is “just as fair” as the first. However, the less worn-out state of the road makes the speaker choose it. Notably, the absence of signs of travel on the chosen path is taken positively rather than negatively. Rather than saying that the road looked as if it had not traveled much, the speaker states that it was “grassy”. Being grassy shows it is the result of a very few people walking on it. The speaker also says that the second road “wanted wear.”

It means that the road itself demanded to walk on it. In this way, the speaker suggests that nonconformity is a positive trait. It also shows that popularity makes things less attractive.

Despite the speaker’s suggestion for nonconformity, the poem remains ambiguous about whether the grassy road will lead to something better. In this way, firstly, the poem states that it is hard to identify what is non-conformist. After choosing the road, the two roads seem about the same. It confuses the speaker more that he does not know if the road was less traveled. The speaker seems to sense that though he or she has attempted to take the road “less traveled,” there’s no actual way to know if it was less traveled.

Secondly, the poem subtly suggests that no guarantee choosing a less walked path will make a positive difference. There is also a third opinion offered by the poem as well. The speaker says that selecting the path made all the differences. It is not the path that makes the difference because no one can truly measure which path is traveled less. The difference is made by choosing a direction that is not conventional. In this way, the poem teaches that it is one’s effort that matters.

Making meaning

This poem suggests that it is less important to think if the speaker’s choice made all the difference from what he believes that it did. People create a fictional version of their lives by making beliefs and meaning when they are not there. However, this poem does not consider meaning-making as deceitful but rather as a part of human life.

Another theme in this poem is indecision. In reality, the speaker of the poem has to choose to travel one road between the two. However, he overthinks and procrastinates. He tries to look for all the experiences he has to face on each road. At last, he decides to take the one that was grassy and less traveled. After making the decision, the speaker still concerns his future and the consequences of his choice. If it was one road, it would be easier for him to travel immediately. Similarly, people face such a situation in their lives, and therefore, they confront indecisiveness. 

Self-belief

The speaker in the poem decides to choose the road himself. He does not rely on someone else to direct him. The speaker seems to have confidence in himself. Therefore, he puts himself responsible for all the consequences in the future regarding his choice in the present. 

This poem suggests that one should have faith in one’s self. Such quality of independent decision- making helps people learn many things. They start valuing their intuition. They build confidence in explaining their decision. In this way, trust in one’s self develops. 

The Road Not Taken Literary Analysis

“The Road Not Taken” is a poem about the struggles of the speaker to decide which one of the two roads he must choose. It has both literal and metaphorical meanings. The two roads symbolize two directions in life to follow. This poem highlights those moments in life when it is necessary to take a firm decision without enough information.

This poem questions a person’s free will and determinism. The speaker in the poem consciously decides which way he has to go. He rejects the path with the bend in it. Also, external factors play an important role in his decision-making process.

This poem is about the sacrifices that one has to make. To make a difference, a person has to prefer one option over another and belief in him.

The poet travels on foot in the woods. He reaches a junction where two roads diverged. Suddenly, he realizes that as a single traveler, he can’t travel both roads. Here, two roads are used as a metaphor for two ways of life. The forest is yellow, which means that it is autumn and the trees are shedding their yellow leaves.

As the speaker can’t travel both the roads, he stands there to try to select which path he is going to travel to. However, the poet wants to go down both roads. He is thinking about it hard. He is looking down one road. He tries to see where it goes. The thickness of the woods blocks the view of the speaker. Also, the road is bent in shape and not linear.

The phrase “as just as it is fair” means righteous and equal. This phrase is an example of a simile. The speaker decides to examine the other path because he finds the other road to be less traveled and full of grass

“Wanted wear” is an example of personification. The speaker has personified the grassy road and says that it wanted people to walk on it.

After traveling through the road, the speaker explores that both the roads are equally traveled. At first, the speaker finds the first road to be the more traveled one. Then, he says that both the roads seem equally traveled. The phrase ‘as for that” refers to the road being less worn.

Lines 11-15

Here, the speaker finds that both the paths are looking the same in the morning. After this, he goes in the flashback. It was a tough decision for him to choose the real road because, in the morning, he was the first person who walked on the road. There were no other footsteps. For this reason, he couldn’t decide the right path immediately as no step had left marks on the leaves on the roads to show him the right road. In these lines, the speaker has used imagery.

The poet exclaims that he saves the first passage for another time. He knows that “way leads” to another, and then another. He knows that in this way, one ends up very far from where one has started the journey. The poet here saves the first road for another day. Additionally, the speaker doesn’t think he will ever be able to come back and take the other path to experience it.

Lines 16-20

This stanza shows the speaker’s failure in choosing the right path. The word ‘sigh’ suggests that he will be disappointed with the decision. He accepts that he will be responsible if he fails in taking the right decision. “Ages and ages” is an example of alliteration.

The poet took the road that no one else did and it made the difference in his life that made him unique. One’s individualism matters. Nevertheless, a “difference” may mean success or complete failure.

Mood and tone

It is important to understand the difference between tone and mood. The tone of the poem is how the author of the work feels about it. One can identify it by examining the diction of the work. The diction of the poem is descriptive.

By using words like “diverged,” “sorry,” and “sigh,” the tone of the poem is about longing and meditation. This poem is reflective and thoughtful. The speaker is confused between two options. It is a turning point in the life of the speaker. He has to choose one path and leave behind the other forever.

The speaker is thinking about the pros and cons of the situation. The decision needs a serious approach to consider the outcomes of each choice.  

The mood of the poem is related to the readers and their feelings about the poem. In this way, the mood of the poem is somber and anxious in the beginning but hopeful at the end.

Narrative poem

“The Road Not Taken” is a narrative poem. It has a character, setting, plot, and conflict. The conflict in the poem is the indecisiveness of the persona of the poem.

Point of View

“The Road Not Taken” is narrated from the first-person point of view. The speaker describes his experience by representing himself as “l.” It enables readers to understand the speaker’s feelings and thoughts.

Style, structure, and Rhyme

“The Road Not Taken” consists of four stanzas. Each stanza comprises five lines. The rhyme is strict with the rhyming scheme ABAAB, except for the last line. It is written in iambic tetrameter.

The setting of the poem is “yellow woods.” It is a place where one road is divided into two. The yellow color depicts the autumn season. The road is in a deserted place because there are no other travelers. The speaker standing at the junction sees that one road is gassier than the other.

The speaker of this poem has no name and identity. There is no depiction of the physical appearance of the speaker. It represents the whole of human nature. Human nature wants life to have meaning and purpose. The speaker of the poem is a traveler who comes up with an important decision to make.

The crossroads symbolize the journey of life. It also signifies the destination. People come across decision- making moments that contain equally balanced alternatives. One has to consider the advantages and disadvantages before making a choice.

Literary Devices in the Poem

Alliteration.

Alliteration is the repetition of similar consonant sounds in a series of words at a stressed syllable. In the second stanza, the sound /w/ is repeated in “ w anted w ear.” Similarly, the sound /f/ is repeated in “ f irst f or” in the third stanza.

It is the repetition of identical vowel sounds in successive words. In this poem, assonance contributes to establish the rhyme of the poem and make it easily readable. “L oo ked down one a s f a r a s I c ou ld,” “ a s just a s f a ir,” “it w a s gr a ssy and w a nted we a r,” and “ a ges and a ges” are all examples of assonance. 

Connotation

Connotation means the secondary meaning of the word. The primary meaning of “The Road” is a path that a person travels. Its secondary meaning is of “choice.” The presence of two paths/two choices gives the feeling of indecision to the speaker.

It is the repetition of consonant sounds at the start, middle or end of the words. “Yello w w oods,” “ t o where i t ben t ,” “ th en took the o th er,” “ w anted w ear,” and “kno w ing ho w w ay leads on to w ay” are all the examples of consonance.

This whole poem is an extended metaphor. The two roads act as a metaphor for two choices in life. The thinking of the speaker about the selection of one road is also a metaphor used for thinking before taking a decision.

The yellow color of the woods is also a metaphor. It is compared with the moment when a person has to choose the downfall of his life or when he is getting old.

Personification

Personification means to attribute human qualities to nonhuman things. Personification occurs in the second stanza when the speaker says that the road was grassy and “wanted wear.” By saying that the road has a “better claim,” the speaker states that the road intends to attract travelers.

For most of the poem, the speaker is describing the setting. Visual imagery is used because the speaker is sketching the scenery. He says that the road is yellow which creates a mental image of trees shedding leaves in autumn. The worn-out state of the road also contributes to the meaning of the poem. There is auditory imagery as well by using the word “sigh.”

The irony in the poem is in the idea of multiple significance of the road. They are not simple roads because they have a secondary meaning as well. The speaker of the poem has to take the road of the majority or the road with fewer travelers. The eventual choice of the speaker is also ironic. Both the roads are equally worn out but the speaker still chooses the second. 

More From Robert Frost

• Mending Wall

A Summary and Analysis of Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Road Not Taken’ is one of Robert Frost’s most famous poems. It appeared in his first collection, Mountain Interval , in 1916; indeed, ‘The Road Not Taken’ opens the volume. For this reason, it’s natural and understandable that many readers take the poem to be Frost’s statement of individualism as a poet: he will take ‘the road less travelled’.

But when we analyse Frost’s poem more closely, we realise how inaccurate such a summary of the poem is. Frost himself, two years before his death, lamented the way readers and critics had misinterpreted the poem, which he called ‘tricky’.

You can read ‘The Road Not Taken’ here .

Paraphrase and summary

Rather than offer a summary of ‘The Road Not Taken’, we’ll undertake a brief paraphrase of the poem’s meaning. ‘I came to a fork in the road in the yellow wood through which I was travelling, and wished I could have travelled both paths. But obviously that wasn’t an option, so I spent a long while standing there and deliberating which to choose.

After spending a good while looking down one of the roads as far as I could see, I then took the other road, since it seemed just as nice. And it seemed to be preferable, perhaps, because it wasn’t as well-trodden as the other – its grass was less worn.

Though actually, if I’m honest, both paths were as worn as each other, suggesting that both roads were really about equal in terms of how many people had passed along them. Both of the roads were covered with leaves and there was no sign, on the morning I passed through that way, that anyone had walked either path yet that day.

I decided to come back another day and take the other path, the road I hadn’t taken. But in reality, knowing that one road tends to lead onto another, I doubted whether I would ever come back to this spot. In the future I’ll tell people, with a sigh, that two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by, and that’s made all the difference.’

Not how the above paraphrase-as-summary turns into more or less word-for-word recital of Frost’s words in those final few lines of the poem. They don’t need paraphrasing: they’re plain as day. Why is it, then, that many readers apparently misinterpret ‘The Road Not Taken’? How should we analyse Frost’s poem, and how have we been getting it wrong?

The way the poem is often summarised – eliding the subtle self-commentary that the poem’s speaker provides – offers a clue to this interpretive misfire. Frost’s narrator comes to a fork in the road and, lamenting the fact that he has to choose between them, takes ‘the one less traveled by’.

Yet this isn’t true, as the poem’s speaker admits: the two paths are, in fact, equally covered with leaves – one is not ‘less traveled by’ after all, but it suits him to pretend that this was so, as a way of justifying his decision to take one road over the other.

After all, ‘two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took one of them, and there was absolutely nothing to pick between them’ wouldn’t have made all the difference, for there is no difference.

One of the best places to begin a close analysis of a poem is often with the title, and with Frost’s poem this old piece of advice is truer than with most poems. After all, the poem is titled ‘The Road Not Taken’, and not ‘The Road Less Travelled’: in other words, Frost’s poem foregrounds to us that it is the road he didn’t take – not the apparently ‘less traveled’ one that he did – which is the real subject of the poem.

The poem’s famous final lines are less a proud assertion of individualism, then, and more a bittersweet example of the way we always rewrite our own histories to justify the decisions we make. ‘I kidded myself that one of the roads was less well-trodden and so, to be different from the mainstream, that’s the one I took, brave and independent risk-taker and road-taker that I am.’

This isn’t true, but it’s the sort of self-myth-making we often go in for. It’s also significant here that in Mountain Interval , where it was first published in 1916, ‘The Road Not Taken’ appears as a sort of preface to the poems that follow: it’s typeset in italics rather than Roman type, as if it’s being offered as a test to the reader.

What is also less well-known than it should be about ‘The Road Not Taken’ is the fact that the poem may have begun life as Frost’s gentle ribbing of his friend, the English poet Edward Thomas, with whom Frost had taken many walks during the pre-WWI years when Frost had been living in England. (Thomas was on his way to visit Frost in June 1914 when his train made an unscheduled stop at Adlestrop railway station – an event that inspired Thomas’s poem of that name.)

Frost found Thomas to be an indecisive man, and after he’d written ‘The Road Not Taken’ but before it was published, he sent it to Thomas, whose indecisiveness even extended to uncertainty over whether to follow Frost to the United States or to enlist in the army and go and fight in France.

Frost intended the poem to be a semi-serious mockery of people like Thomas, but it was taken more seriously by Thomas, and by countless readers since. Indeed, Frost’s poem may even have been what inspired Thomas to make up his mind and finally choose which ‘road’ to follow: he chose war over America, and ‘The Road Not Taken’ is, perhaps, what forced his hand.

If you found this analysis of ‘The Road Not Taken’ helpful, you can listen to Frost reading his poem here .

About Robert Frost

Robert Frost (1874-1963) is regarded as one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century. And yet he didn’t belong to any particular movement: unlike his contemporaries William Carlos Williams or Wallace Stevens he was not a modernist, preferring more traditional modes and utilising a more direct and less obscure poetic language.

He famously observed of free verse, which was favoured by many modernist poets, that it was ‘like playing tennis with the net down’.

8 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’”

Thank you for that. Appreciate it.

Thank you. I was looking for this one.

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Interesting, thanks for this. It is my favorite poem and poet.

• Pingback: KOMMONSENTSJANE -A Short Analysis of Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’ — Interesting Literature | kommonsentsjane

A really good analysis of a surprisingly tricky poem…

John Green does a great vlog post of the poem–uses his kayak trip as an example.

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The Road Not Taken

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Summary and Study Guide

One of the most recognized and often quoted poems in 20th-century American poetry, Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” (1915) celebrates the strength of individuality and the heroic decision to take control of life. The poem offers a simple narrative moment: A man, walking a path in the woods, comes to a fork in the road, and he decides which path to take. Indeed, the poem, with its apparent hyper-serious tone and preachy didacticism , has become a staple in commencement addresses, as it seems to demand turning away from the herd and following the heart’s inclinations despite any misgivings.

The poem, however, is deceptively simple. A major expression of Modernism, in which a generation of daring and uncompromising poets, centered in England, recast the nature of poetry itself through a subtle use of irony that infused their verse with an alarming sense of anxiety and spiritual crisis, the poem resists making heroic the assertion of choice in life and suggests in fact that such dramatic choices really have no consequences. Choice becomes meaningful only in retrospect, a measure of the ability of the mind later to refashion such impulsive decisions into something that passes for wisdom. Take either path, the poem slyly suggests with existential irony, it makes little difference.

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Poet Biography

Although when he died at 88 in 1963, Robert Frost was regarded as America’s most beloved poet and the nation’s unofficial Poet Laureate, the winner of four Pulitzer Prizes and one of the most recognized American writers of the 20th century, Frost struggled to find a publisher for his poetry until he was nearly 40.

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Despite his reputation as the poet of the rugged New England backwoods, Frost was actually born in San Francisco, although he came to Massachusetts when he was 11 when his family moved there after his father, a successful journalist, died. A precocious reader early on, particularly the intricate metrical inventions of Edgar Allan Poe, Frost always knew he would be a poet. He struggled to commit to the discipline of education, attending first Dartmouth College and then briefly Harvard but never finishing a degree. He tried a number of occupations, including shoe repair, journalism, and even working the farm his grandfather bought for him when Frost married. He failed at all of them, and in 1912, desperate to find a publisher for his poetry, he and his wife relocated to Dymock, England, about two hours west of London. There he found welcome company among the Modernists, most notably American expatriate Ezra Pound.

Frost, then in his forties, quickly published two well-received volumes of poetry, and when he returned to the United States in 1915 his work was widely recognized for its lyrical grace, its carefully chiseled lines, and its exploration of the dynamic between humanity and nature. Over the next 20 years, Frost became America’s most prolific and most admired poet. His collections were best sellers, and Frost himself became a celebrity. Frost enjoyed a long teaching career at different universities working with young poets. He gave public readings that became entertainment sensations. With his craggy face and shock of unkempt white hair, Frost became, after Ernest Hemingway, the most recognized writer of his generation, gracing the covers of both Time and Life .

His verse, grounded in traditional notions of careful metrics and strict rhyme ( free verse , he often complained, was like playing tennis without the net), was at once accessible and conversational and yet philosophically profound, even unsettling. Invited by President John F. Kennedy, a fellow New Englander and an avid admirer of Frost’s work, to deliver an original poem at Kennedy’s inauguration in January, 1961, the poet, then 86, could not make out the typed lines of the poem he wrote because of the glare of the sun. Without missing a beat, he recited from memory “The Gift Outright,” a poem he published nearly 50 years earlier. The bravura performance cemented Frost’s international reputation as America’s Poet. Frost continued to write until his death in Boston in January 1963, following a massive heart attack. He was buried by his wife and five of his children in a modest grave in the rustic churchyard of the Old First Church in Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph quotes his own poem “The Lesson for Today”: “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.”

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.

Frost, Robert. “ The Road Not Taken .” 1915. Poetry Foundation.

A nameless hiker of indeterminate age and non-specified gender takes a leisurely morning stroll through a familiar forest, its trees a monochromatic yellow. The hiker suddenly comes to an unexpected fork in the path. This presents an unsettling dilemma, which path to take. The hiker regrets at first that they cannot go down both paths—“Sorry I could not travel both” (Line 2)—a quixotic, and unsettlingly childish response that masks major confusion. He is momentarily paralyzed, a happy walk suddenly morphing into a problem, a thorny choice he must make. Both paths tease, goad, beckon. It is a moment of indecision that quickly becomes for the timid, cautious hiker a titanic predicament. The hiker frets, peering down one path as far as he can see, to “where it bent in the undergrowth” (Line 5), and then peering down the other, trying earnestly to find some reason to choose one path over the other.

His first inclination is to play it safe and head down the more beaten path, the more path-like path. Which path had been used more? Heavier traffic would indicate to his careful logic a safer passage, a more reliable path. As far as the hiker can tell, as far as he can see, however, the paths seem the same, worn exactly the same. They are both green, “grassy,” indicating neither had been used much, that both “wanted wear” (Line 8). Both seem to offer a way that “no step had trodden black” (Line 12). In the morning sun, both paths “equally lay” (Line 11). Neither one is safer than the other, neither more used than the other. The hiker is left back where he started, how to choose? The implications of the decision become unsettling: Either path might offer something he would miss should he decide to take the other path.

The only non-viable alternative is to stand forever fixated; that is, self-inflicted paralysis. The hiker must choose. The decision to follow one path is more impulsive than considered, more about an illogical whim than actual logic or foresight. He moves on to one of the paths, the one that did not bend out of sight, reassuring himself quickly that some other day, later, he can certainly choose the other path. He tries, then, to minimize the implications of the choice. “Oh, I kept the first for another day!” (Line 13). Yet, as he reflects as he moves down his chosen path, such a reboot is unlikely, that life being what it is may never return him to that crossroad, may never give him the chance to follow the other path, to see where it might have led.

In the closing stanza, the hiker takes a step back and congratulates himself on his decision-making prowess. As he gambols down the path, he is proud of his pro-active response to the crisis of a fork in the road. He decides grandly, without a hint of saving irony or self-mockery, that this decision of his will become the stuff of heroic tales, recounted “ages and ages hence” (Line 27). He is certain that he will recall with a “sigh” (Line 16), an ambiguous emotional response, how when confronted by the dilemma of a fork in the road one extraordinarily ordinary morning he chose one way over the other and how that the choice has “made all the difference” (Line 20). He actually anticipates his own bloviating insincerity, how he will later claim boldly that he chose the path “less travelled by” (Line 19), a manifest lie. That choice he himself acknowledged even before he made it was really no choice at all, one path being no better than the other, just different. Only in the looking back will that decision, a product not of calculated deliberation but rather of raw impulse, become a decision that meant everything.

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The Road Not Taken – Summary & Analysis

The road not taken by robert frost, introduction:.

We make choices every day. Some of them are small and trivial like deciding what to have for breakfast, while others such as deciding on a career are huge and potentially life-changing. Some decisions are simple to make whereas others are inherently difficult and require due deliberation. Robert Frost’s ‘The Road not Taken’ is a poem about the hard choices we face and the conscious decisions we take in life. It is a portrayal of the state of human mind in the process of making such life altering decisions. The poem captures the feelings of indecisiveness in the face of decisions and the agony of regrets.

Since its publication in 1916 in the journal ‘Mountain Interval’ the poem has gained widespread popularity. It is one the most frequently quoted poems by orators in motivational talks and is seen as the most common end address in valedictorian speeches. The poet Robert Frost gained much fame since the poem’s publication and is now hailed as one of the greatest poets in American literature. The Road not Taken is undisputedly his most popular work. The poem was conceived as a consequence of Frost’s stay in London in his early forties where he became acquainted with the writer Edward Thomas who was to later become a dear friend of the poet. The two would go on long walks and Thomas was a great inspiration in the production of the poem.

The poem is often interpreted as a symbol of encouragement to follow one’s dreams and take control of one’s own life. And while it is true to some extent, the poem has a much deeper meaning. It is not merely a reflection on the choices we make in life, be it good and bad. The poet wonders how different his life would have been if he’d made a different choice instead. It is more a rumination over the opportunities turned down. The poem is neutral towards the outcome of the choices and concentrates only on the instance when one is on the brink of making a choice.

The theme of the poem ‘The Road not Taken’ revolves around choices. It is about the decisions we make and the fact that we must live with them. The poem is often seen as an inspirational piece as it propagates the idea of choosing the unconventional and favouring the new and unexplored ways. It is seen as a salute to individualism due to the popular interpretation. However, the poem is much more queer and vague than it appears at first glance. While lines like ‘I took the one (road) less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.’ advocate the idea of taking the proverbial leap of faith believing that it will lead to good things when read individually, the same doesn’t fit in the full context of the poem. It also appears as a commentary on our own self-deception. The poem has two interpretations which form a stark contrast with each other. One, which is popularly held by laymen is that it is a motivational address, whilst the other regarded mostly by some poetry scholars is that is it completely the opposite of inspirational and delves in the realm of ‘quiet regret’ as a mere cautionary tale. The poet achieves this by remaining neutral in the poem regarding his choices and allows the reader to pick out the meaning they want from the poem. This makes it universal in nature and is a testament to its popularity.

Poetic aspects:

Structurally the poem is divided into four stanzas with five lines each.

The poem follows a traditional sense in rhythm and uses Iambic feet throughout the poem. However, the lines in the poem do not form a perfect meter. They closely resemble Iambic tetrameter. The lines are not strict regarding individual syllables when forming rhythmic feet. We see the poet favouring the ease of comprehension to rhythmic attribute in the poem.

The poem has a ABAAB rhyme scheme. There is a notable example of enjambment serving the purpose of maintaining rhyme scheme in the last stanza in the lines: “ Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, ” This trait was prevalent in older English poems but has since seen a gradual decline.

The poet uses ‘roads’ as a symbol for choices. Since roads invoke an image of passing and journeying, the symbol represents progression in life.

The Road Not Taken: Stanza-wise Explanation

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;

The poet narrates how he once arrived at a fork in the road where he had to choose between two roads to continue on his journey. This image of a traveller in a yellow wood is a metaphor for the choice between two alternatives. The poet says that he is sorry that he could not travel through both roads (meaning that he could not choose both the alternatives). The poet, as the speaker of the poem, makes an address to the reader which is a point of interest in this stanza. There are two theories regarding this. One is that Robert Frost dedicated this poem to Thomas and thus is addressing him over a mutual topic through the medium of the poem. This seems quite plausible as Frost even sent a copy of the anthology to his friend Thomas who took it rather personally. The other is that Frost is addressing to the general reader in which case the poem takes universal nature.

The poet was in a predicament as he stood before the diverging roads in the yellow wood. He stood there for a long time contemplating over which road he should take, that is which choice he should go with. The term ‘One traveller’ is a significant one here in the poem. It gives us an idea that the speaker was attempting something all on his own on which he couldn’t have asked anyone for assistance. He looked down one road as far as he could see to inspect how it was. This is a metaphor for his act of deliberation when making the decision. When we make big decisions we usually weigh the pros and cons and contemplate how a certain decision would affect us before we’ve taken it. The poet’s act of looking down the road to where it bent is a reflection of this.

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,

The poet pondered for a long time over which road he should travel on as he stood in the yellow wood. He inspected one road and simply took the second which was just as agreeable as the first one. After thoroughly examining the first option the poet turned to the second and decided that he was going to go with this choice. The poet explains his reasons for taking the second choice or ‘road’ in the ensuing lines in the poem. It is important to note here that the poet says both the roads, that is, both the choices were ‘equally fair’ or agreeable. He does not say that one was good and the other bad, but that one was perhaps better than the other, the key word to look for here being ‘perhaps’. This is often misinterpreted.

The poet says that the road he chose had a better claim than the one he let go because it was untraveled, thus grassy, and it was as if the road was wanting wear and tear. This is to say that the choice that the poet had decided on was something new, something no one had done before. These two lines are interpreted as encouragement to find and explore new avenues by readers.

Again, in the following lines, the poet says that though the second road was grassy it was worn just about the same as the other. This is contrasting to the previous lines and further suggests that the poet viewed both the roads, meaning both the choices, about just the same. So, it feels almost as if the poet picked the second road at random.

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.

Both the roads were equally unexplored that morning when the speaker came to the divergence in the wood. Both of them were equally untouched. We infer this when the poet further adds that the leaves on both the roads were not trodden black. No one had passed through the road that morning before the speaker came there. This further develops the idea that the poet was doing something unique which no one before him had attempted. The use of the term ‘equally’ here is to be regarded with caution. The poet says that the two roads or ‘choices’ were equal only in the sense that both were ‘untraveled’ or ‘unexplored’.

The poet decided to take the second road and says that he kept the first one for some other day. We can see that the poet is unsure of what his decision will lead to and thus wants to keep his options open. He further adds that he knows how one decision leads on to another such that one goes so far that there is no way of turning back. The poet is doubtful if he will ever return to the same place from where he started. So, the poet kept the first road (meaning his first choice) as a contingency plan.

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.

In the words of Lawrence Thompson who wrote a biography on Frost, the poet as the poem’s speaker is ‘ one who habitually wastes energy in regretting any choice made: belatedly but wistfully he sighs over the attractive alternative rejected. ‘ The poet says that he will be recollecting this story with a sigh. Whether this ‘sign’ would be a melancholic one lamenting the decision or a sigh of relief for having made the right decision, we do not know. We see that although the poet has decided on a single choice, he is not completely happy and will thus be recollecting the memory of the decision with a manifestation of grief looking back at what he’d done. Although both the choices are equally dear to the poet, he wanted to have both and not just choose between the two. This is shown by the initial lines in the first stanza ‘and sorry I could not travel both.’ This is the reason why the poet appears unhappy.

The poet says that he ‘took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.’ This is an often-quoted part of the poem and has grown to represent as a symbol of motivation for people to do the unconventional and partake in the new and promising without fear. The line ‘and that has made all the difference’ has turned into the idea that ‘to stand out from the crowd one must do something different and original.’ Although this is a good conception, it does not fit exactly with the poem as we’ve explained in the theme section of this article.

The poet says that taking the road less travelled has made all the difference in his life but whether this difference is positive or negative is unclear. On one hand we can assume that it is negative, as the poet says he would sigh recollecting this, making the poem more of a cautionary note on unconventional choices, while on the other hand the sigh can be a sigh of relief for having made the right decision, making the poem an inspirational piece. Whatever the poet’s original idea may be, the poem has found an enormous readership with each person deciding the meaning for themselves. There is no denying that ‘The Road not Taken’ is one of the most celebrated poems today.

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The Road Not Taken Poem Summary and Analysis

The road not taken summary.

This article deals with the Road Not Taken summary written by Robert Frost and published in the year 1916. The Road Not Taken Summary is a poem that describes the dilemma of a person standing at a road with diversion. This diversion symbolizes real-life situations. Sometimes, in life too there come times when we have to take tough decisions. We could not decide what is right or wrong for us.

Driven by our hopes and ambitions, we take a decision taken by fewer people. We think that if fail to seek accomplishments we could get a chance to change and start again. However, we travel too far and have to regret at the end. Also, it is possible that we could become an extraordinary person because of that one decision. Thus, the road not taken summary focuses on making wise decisions in life.

The Road Not Taken Summary in Short

The article is all about the Road Not Taken Summary by Robert Frost . It explains about the road not taken summary in short. This poem signifies a situation where the poet was walking down a road that had a diversion. He had to choose between the two paths. Since he was a single person, he could choose only one of the two paths. The wood was yellow which represents a world full of people who have been residing for many years.

The poet kept standing at that fork and looked at the paths very carefully. He looked as far as he could. Before moving forward on one path, he wants to understand how it was. Was it suitable for him to walk on it or not? He was able to see the path till from where it got curved. However, afterward it was covered with trees and thus was hidden. He wanted to understand the advantages and disadvantages of the paths. The same happens in life too. We have to make decisions thinking about its good and bad consequences in the future.

The poet looked at one path for a long time to decide whether it’s good or not for him. Then he takes the alternative path as he feels that both paths are equally good. He feels that the path he chose was better for him. The path was grassy which depicted that it was walked over by fewer people and also, it was ‘wanted wear”.

It depicted that the path was unused. However, as he walks on the path for some distance, he realizes that both the paths were similarly worn out. Even in our life, every decision has its own good and bad consequences. We might think we are in a better position than the others but it is not the reality.

The poet says that the two paths looked similar that morning. Both were having leaves on them.  No one stepped on that and thus they were green. He decided to move forward on one path and keep the other for another day. Although he knew that he would not be able to return back as one path would lead to another. This happens in life too. We make a decision and move forward in that direction. We think that we would get a chance to start over again if we fail. But that does not happen.

The poet says that sometime in the future, he will take a deep breath and tell that once in a lifetime he had to take a tough decision. He was standing at a diversion of two roads. Both looked to him equally well. Thus, he decides to move forward on the road which fewer people took. As a result, it has made him what he is today. That one decision shaped his future.

Similarly, in the future, when we grow up, and then we have to say that once upon a time when you were in your youth, you have to take tough decisions. The choice made by you had made you what you are today. Thus, the article of the poem the road not taken summary gives a very strong message to the people.

It tells us to be careful in making decisions in life. One should be very wise and careful while making choices as our choices shape our future. Also, once we make a decision, it is very difficult to change and start again. One bad decision could make us regret it throughout life. All this depends on the choices we make today.

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The wonderful summary thank you for this.

They did not belong to the family of gorden cook and you also didn’t write the spelling correct it’s James cook 😶😑

What’s funny is that Miss Fairchild said the line- “Money isn’t everything. But people always misunderstand things and remain stupid-” when she herself misunderstood the situation.

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Robert Frost: Poems

By robert frost, robert frost: poems summary and analysis of "the road not taken" (1916).

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.

This poem is made up of four stanzas of five lines, each with a rhyme scheme of ABAAB.

Along with “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” this poem is one of Frost’s most beloved works and is frequently studied in high school 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 life was fundamentally different that it would have been had he chosen the more well-traveled path.

This reading of the poem is extremely popular because every reader can empathize with the narrator’s decision: having to choose between two paths without having any knowledge of where each road will lead. Moreover, the narrator’s decision to choose the “less traveled” path demonstrates his courage. Rather than taking the safe path that others have traveled, the narrator prefers to make his own way in the world.

However, when we look closer at the text of the poem, it becomes clear that such an idealistic analysis is largely inaccurate. The narrator only distinguishes the paths from one another after he has already selected one and traveled many years through life. When he first comes upon the fork in the road, the paths are described as being fundamentally identical. In terms of beauty, both paths are equally “fair,” and the overall “…passing there / Had worn them really about the same.”

It is only as an old man that the narrator looks back on his life and decides to place such importance on this particular decision in his life. During the first three stanzas, the narrator shows no sense of remorse for his decision nor any acknowledgement that such a decision might be important to his life. Yet, as an old man, the narrator attempts to give a sense of order to his past and perhaps explain why certain things happened to him. Of course, the excuse that he took the road “less traveled by” is false, but the narrator still clings to this decision as a defining moment of his life, not only because of the path that he chose but because he had to make a choice in the first place.

Robert Frost: Poems Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Robert Frost: Poems is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Robert Frost as a poet Symbolisms

This is a really detailed question for this short answer space. Nature is Frost's main motif for symbolism. Frost is intetrested in the cycle of life and death shown through the seasons in a way that people can connect with. There is also the idea...

Relationship between man and woman?

In Frost's poems (particularly after 1914), he focuses on the trouble men and women have within their intimate relationships and examines the reason why many of these relationships have stagnated.

You might want to check out Gradesaver's theme...

Discuss the theme of the poem "The Road Not Taken" written by Robert Frost.

The central theme of "The Road Not Taken" revolves around the significance of human choice. Through its tone, language, and structure, the poem is able to offer multiple understandings of what it means to choose. The first interpretation of choice...

Study Guide for Robert Frost: Poems

Robert Frost: Poems study guide contains a biography of poet Robert Frost, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis of his major poems.

• About Robert Frost: Poems
• Robert Frost: Poems Summary
• "Mending Wall" Video
• Character List

Essays for Robert Frost: Poems

Robert Frost: Poems essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Robert Frost's poems.

• Nature Imagery in the Works of Robert Frost
• Robert Frost in England - A Short Biography
• An Explication of Mending Wall By Robert Frost
• The Most of It
• "Eternal Freshness of the Flawless Poem:" Why Frost's Poetry Remains Vital

Lesson Plan for Robert Frost: Poems

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Robert Frost: Poems
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Robert Frost: Poems Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Robert Frost: Poems

• Introduction
• Awards and recognition
• Legacy and cultural influence

• Summary and Analysis of The Road Not Taken

Summary and Analysis of "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

Introduction to the poem: The Road Not Taken

The poem, The Road Not Taken, is one of the famous poems written by an American poet: Robert Frost. It is a narrative poem that describes the struggle of a central character standing on the road that has diversion and he want to choose correct path but fails to decide which one is better for him. It is a lyric with a patterned rhyming and a regular metrical scheme. The central idea of the poem is quite simple so that every individual can relate it to his personal life, especially when it comes to the concept of choices and opportunities in the life of an individual.

Text of the poem:

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.

Rhyme Scheme and Structure of the Poem:

‘The Road Not Taken’ has an interesting style. Unique collection of words, use of variation, and perfect composition make it a superb piece of Robert Frost. The poem is narrative in form and written in the first-person. So, the poem is a perfect lyric poem.

The poem is twenty lines in length. It comprises four stanzas. Each stanza has five lines. The rhyme scheme of each stanza is ABAAB. The First, third, and fourth lines rhyme together, and second and fifth line rhyme together. Let us analyze rhyme scheme of the second stanza of The Road Not Taken.

Line 1: Then took the other, as just as fair ,

Line 2: And having perhaps the better claim ,

Line 3: Because it was grassy and wanted wear ;

Line 4: Though as for that the passing there

Line 5: Had worn them really about the same ,

In the first line of the above stanza, “ fair ” rhymes with the words, “ wear ” and “ there ”. The second line ends with “ claim ” which rhymes with fifth line “ same ”. The whole poem has the same pattern ABAAB. T he use of enjambment in the poem keeps the sense flowing where one line runs into the next smoothly.

Each line of the poem consists of nine syllables. However, there is little variation; some lines contain a syllable more or less than the average syllable count. Second syllable of the meter is generally stressed/accented. The overall meter of the poem tetrameter.

Look at the meter of the below line from The Road Not Taken!

And  sor ry I  could  not  tra vel  both (2 nd line of The Road Not Taken)

Summary of the Poem: The Road Not Taken

In the poem, The Road Not Taken, readers come to know that the poet, Robert Frost, was traveling alone one day on a road. There were yellow woods across the roads, which means there is the start of fall season and the leaves are turning yellow. The poet reached a point where the road had a diversion (the road was divided into two different paths). Instantly, he realized that being a traveler, taking both the roads is not possible. Robert Frost had to choose one between the two roads, but he found it difficult because he never came across these two roads in his life and he was not sure which one is better. (Here, two roads indicate two ways of life.)

Due to uncertainty, the poet stood at that fork and looked at the both roads very carefully. Before advancing on one path, he wants to understand how it was. Was it better or both roads are same? The poet was curious about the roads and wanted to understand the advantages and disadvantages of the both paths. He looked at the one road carefully till from where it got curved and afterward the road was covered with tall trees and thus was hidden. He took a long time to decide whether it is good or not for him. Then the poet takes the alternative road because he feels that both roads are equally good. The path was grassy which depicted that fewer people took this road and it was ‘wanted wear”. After walking through the road, he realizes that both the roads were similarly worn out.

Here, again, the poet realized that both the roads were looking same. Perhaps, he goes in the flashback. The poet was indecisive, and it was difficult for him to recognize the better road. Secondly, he was the first person on the road that morning and there were no clues that which road is more travelled. Both roads were having green leaves, and no one stepped on them. He decided to move forward on the second road and saves the first road for another day.

The poet knows how “way leads” to another, and then another until you end up very far from where you started your journey. The poet took the second road and saved first road for another day. Now, he wishes that he could go back but he think he will never be able to come back to take the first road.

In second half of the poem, the poet shows his failure in choosing the right path. The word ‘sigh’ indicates that he is dissatisfied with his decision of taking second road. The poet accepts his failure of taking less travelled road. He took the road that no one else took, and that is what has made the difference. Here, the word difference is ambiguous that shows how Robert Frost become successful by taking the road that was not taken by people and this difference of choice made him different from the people. However, there could be opposite meanings of the word “difference” that mean utter failure.

Analysis of the Poem “The Road Not Taken”

First stanza.

The poem opens with beautiful  imagery, “a yellow wood”, which appeals the mind of the readers and reminds colors of autumn. The abrupt opening of the poem reveals main idea of the poem in very first two lines. The speaker comes across two different choices and he is stuck to choose the better bath. The speaker looks indecisive and perplex. He tries to examine both roads by looking down until the sight explores.

Second Stanza

Finally, the speaker selects a path, which looks him better to carry on his journey. The road he selects is less travelled, and he prefers it. As he travels a short, he realizes that both the roads are similar and there is no much difference. Here speaker is uncertain about his decision and this uncertainty leads him to over-thinking. It happens in our daily lives when we take a decision; we think again and again either the decision is right or wrong. Sometime we take a right path but remain in confusions that if we took another one, that might be better than this one. The speaker is also uncertain about his decision.

Third Stanza

The speaker is walking on the second road, and he observes that both paths are similar. Because no one had stepped through to disturb the leaves on both roads. The speaker consoles himself that he will take first road another day and looks satisfied that he saved it for future. Here, his uncertainty is at peak. First, he consoles himself that he saved first road for another day, but on the other hand, he honestly confesses to himself that it’s highly unlikely he will come back to travel this other road. Because he is well aware that now he will not be able to get back because the road he has taken will find other paths for him.

Last Stanza

In the last stanza, the speaker foresees that in the future, he will recount his decision and will tell it to other about his decision of making a choice. The last stanza is a bit confusing that has different meanings. The last line reveals that the difference is all due to selection of the path chosen that was less travelled. However, the word difference leads to controversy that this difference is either the failure of taking less travelled path or the success of the poet. Up to some extent, it seems the success of the poet, that he travelled where people hesitate to move.

Main Themes in the Poem

The poem has a verity of different themes. Some of the main themes of The Road Not Taken are choice, journey of life, desires, uncertainty, indecision, ambiguity, and over-thinking. In this poem, the poet has to make a choice between two decisions and he is uncertain which one is better.

Theme of Journey of life : The journey of the poet on a road is a depiction of the journey of life. Journey of life is one of the main theme of The Road Not Taken. The junction on the road is the indication of the time in life where we have different opportunities to carry on life journey.

Theme of Choice : The speaker is walking on a road and he reaches a point where road splits into two different paths. He has two choices to continue his journey. Here these choices are referred to our daily life opportunities and we have to make a better choice.  

Theme of Desires : In the first stanza, the post tells that he is unable to take both roads which means he want to take both roads but it is not possible. He wants to evaluate both roads and wants to make a choice of a better road. Again here, it refers to our daily life where we have different opportunities and desires to avail all the opportunities but it is not possible. Same desire is highlighted in the line of the first stanza: And sorry I could not travel both.

Theme of Uncertainty : This is also a prevalent theme of The Road Not Taken. The poet is uncertain to choose the right path. When he decides and takes a road to follow, he is still not sure that he is on the right path or wrong. Both paths look similar and he in uncertain about his decision.

Theme of indecision in The Road Not Taken : Readers come to know at very start of the poem about the indecisive attitude of the speaker. He takes a lot of time to decide but still he seems fail to make a correct decision. Generally, it happens in lives of the people that they became perplex when they have to make a choice. Some time they take a good decision but they remain confused about that decision.

Symbolism in the Poem “The Road Not Taken”

Robert Frost uses a verity of different symbols in The Road not Taken. The main symbols are road, yellow woods, diversion, leaves, undergrowth, ages and ages, and difference.

Road : The road symbolizes journey of life.

Diversion : The image of the road splitting into two paths symbolizes a choice in life of an individual.

Yellow Woods : Yellow woods symbolize the idea of change.

Leaves : Leaves symbolize clues for the better choice.

Undergrowth : Undergrowth stands for the undiscovered regions of the future.

Ages and ages : Ages and ages refers to assumption of future when present will have become far past.

Difference : Difference symbolizes the choices that are made by very few people.

Analysis of Literary Derives in The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost uses a verity of different literary devices in  ‘The Road Not Taken’ . Below are the main literary devices.

Use of Metaphor in the Poem : Robert Frost used several metaphors in The Road Not Taken. Title of the poem itself has metaphorical meaning. The word ‘road’ is used as a metaphor for the choice we make for different opportunities. The phrase “yellow woods” is also a metaphor that implies the idea of change in difficult situation as tree change their leaves. In last stanza of Tw Road Not Taken, Robert Frost uses a metaphor “less traveled road” that means the choices less preferred by humans.

Use of Simile : Simile is a literary device that is used in poetry to make a stated comparison of two different things. In simile, we use word ‘as’ or ‘like’ to make a comparison. The Robert Frost used simile in second stanza, “as just as fair”. Here poet compare road to an easy way through life

Use of Personification : Personification is a literary device and it has wide use in poetry. In personification, a poet attribute a human’s quality to a non-living thing or to an abstract idea. Here, in The Road Not take, poet personifies road and attribute it with a human quality. In second stanza, poet stated, “Because it was grassy and wanted wear”. The use of wanted wear is a beautiful personification.

The poem implies a deep concept regarding choices and decisions we made in our daily life. It was his best poetic form to convey a deep message in a beautiful poem. The poet reveals to us that we make different choices and after making a decision we regret that if we might choose another option that would be better for us. Similarly, poet takes one road as a better road but after travelling a little, he observes both roads are same and still makes a wish to take first one. This uncertainty prevails in minds of very individual and he tries to rely that we should make one decision; and when we move with a decision, we should be consistent.

   Robert Frost’ Poems

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7 thoughts on “Summary and Analysis of The Road Not Taken”

Last stanza makes me confused and specifically the word ‘difference’. Robert Frost used it in positive sense or negative sense? Can we relate it to his poetic works? Or it is linked with his personal domestic life?

The Road Not Taken is one of my favorite poems. I also love to choose the road that is less traveled. Difficult and less travailed roads have bigger opportunities. Majority follow people blindly and it is not good all the time.

This article is rich in its core and wide in topic ranges. The word ‘difference’ at the end of poem The Road Not Taken is used mysteriously. Here it is explained nicely. Still it has confusion that either the poet was successful or failure by taken less traveled road. But majority quotes is as a seccess of the poet. The Robert Frost himself says that the handling of the poem is bit tricky.

The Road Not Taken is one of my favorite poems written by Robert Frost .😊🌹

Dear sir it’s very useful and perfect in its composition. Thanks for such a single unit analysis.

A beautiful poem with good explanation❤. I could not find other poems. Kindly publish other poems of Robert Frost also.

Your explanation of the poem is very comprehensible, and thanks for covering the range of topic in a single article.

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“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost Analysis – A Quick Summary

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost is a poem that is at home in practically every high school English class on the planet. This is an iconic 20th-century poem and also a poem that is subject to misinterpretation. This article will serve as an in-depth The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost analysis, alongside a brief biography of the poet and a few The Road Not Taken summary points. So, what type of poem is The Road Not Taken? What is the theme of The Road Not Taken ? What is The Road Not Taken rhyme scheme? These are a small selection of questions that we will be answering as you keep reading. Let’s get to that, shall we?

Table of Contents

• 1 The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost Analysis
• 2 The Road Not Taken Summary Points
• 3 Biography of Robert Frost
• 4.1 The Format of The Road Not Taken
• 4.2 Stanza One
• 4.3 Stanza Two
• 4.4 Stanza Three
• 4.5 Stanza Four
• 5.1 What Is The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost?
• 5.2 Who Was Robert Frost?
• 5.3 What Is The Road Not Taken Rhyme Scheme?
• 5.4 What Type of Poem Is The Road Not Taken?
• 5.5 What Is the Theme of The Road Not Taken?

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost Analysis

The Road Not Taken is one of the most famous American poems of all time and, at the time of writing, it is a few years older than a century. The poem is not all that old in comparison to some of the other most famous poems in the world, but it has become such an integral American poem that it is taught throughout the world. One of the great appeals of this poem is likely the universalism that can be found within it.

The theme of the poem is one that everyone can understand as it is concerned with choices, but we will get to that when we get to the actual analysis of the poem.

This text first appeared, over a century ago, in the August 1915 issue of Atlantic Monthly . This is a magazine that is still published to this day. Although, it has undergone a name change and is now simply known as The Atlantic . The poem would eventually wind up in one of Robert Frost’s poetry collections .

From there “The Road Not Taken” would become one of the best-known 20th-century poems in the English language.

The Road Not Taken Summary Points

Before we start with our The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost analysis, we should give a brief summary of things for those who may need a few quick points. This is a small selection of The Road Not Taken summary points that may be useful for those who may need to analyze this poem for some or another reason.

• The poem is about choices. This is the central theme around which the poem is presenting itself to us. We are meant to consider that choices are not as easy to identify as we may wish that they are.
• The poem uses a road metaphor. While choices are the central theme that the poem explores, it needs to explore this through certain means, and, in this case, the poem uses the metaphor of a road that has diverged. The two paths that can be chosen on the road represent our possible choices.
• The poem is often misunderstood. While poetry is up for interpretation, many people do misunderstand this poem. The poem does not state that the speaker “chose” the path that was less traveled, but it also draws attention to that supposed correct choice and undermines it by showing that choices can actually be very similar to one another.

And with that, we have concluded our short list of The Road Not Taken summary points. This is only a short list, but it should be somewhat helpful to those who need a summary of this variety. However, if you want to learn a lot more about The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, then let’s move on from here and instead look at our far more in-depth analysis.

Biography of Robert Frost

Robert Frost is considered to be one of the greatest American poets to have ever lived. He is even considered, by many, to be a quintessential American poet. His work has become known for its depiction of rural American life and was often concerned with the New England landscape. His command of American colloquial speech has made him a mouthpiece for American English and poetry in general.

Over his long career, Robert Frost would go on to become the only poet to have received a total of four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.

He has essentially become an institution of his own, and he has even won the Congressional Gold Medal for his work. His work is still fondly remembered to this day, and it is often taught in schools around the world. This should help us to understand why The Road Not Taken has become such an iconic example of his work. It’s now time for us to dive into an analysis of this masterpiece of American poetry.

An In-Depth The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost Analysis

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost is a very famous poem and one that is rather simple in its general design and message, but it’s also one that can be easy to misunderstand. The reason that this is evident is because many have misunderstood the poem’s message. Some of the language is more archaic in its presentation, and this can lead to some confusion about the meaning of the poem, but we are about to commit to an in-depth The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost analysis. So, we need to start with the poem in more general terms before we engage in any stanza-by-stanza analysis.

The Format of The Road Not Taken

It is important to first note the general format of a poem that you wish to analyze. In this case, there are a variety of points to consider. Firstly, what type of poem is The Road Not Taken? This is a narrative poem, and this basically means that it, as the name suggests, has a narrative, or a story, that it tells. This is in juxtaposition to what we often perceive as more “traditional” poems, which tend to deal with thoughts and feelings in a less structured manner than a typical narrative.

So, there is a central character and an inciting action of some kind that this character needs to deal with. As is standard, the central character will simply be referred to as the “speaker” in this analysis.

Next, we may ask ourselves about The Road Not Taken rhyme scheme. In this case, the rhyme scheme is arranged around four quintain stanzas. This means that each stanza is made up of five lines. These five lines each have a repeated rhyme scheme. Specifically, the rhyme scheme is arranged as ABAAB. This means that there are only two rhyming arrangements in each of these stanzas. This also indicates that, in total, there are twenty lines in this poem. This means that it isn’t a particularly long poem, but it isn’t as short as a sonnet.

The poem makes use of an irregular iambic tetrameter structure, and this, along with the use of enjambment, in which lines move into the next without the need for a pause, allows “The Road Not Taken” to have a conversational tone.

All of this backs up the theme of this particular text. So, what is the theme of The Road Not Taken ? Well, the theme is choices, but we will need to examine the poem in full before we can truly examine and understand the theme of this poem. So, let’s get underway with our in-depth The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost analysis.

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;

Before we truly start on our stanza-by-stanza The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost analysis, we need to establish that the poem makes use of a poem-length metaphor. The metaphor here is concerned with the theme. We have already stated that the theme of the poem entails choices, but the primary metaphor through which that theme is explored is the metaphor of a road. There is a road that stretches ahead of the speaker in this poem, and the fork in the road represents a choice that the poet has to make.

If we read this poem in a purely literal sense, it could be about a man walking down a country road and encountering a simple fork in the road, but it goes a lot deeper than this literal meaning. So, it will be best to keep this in mind as we consider this road metaphor that is used.

The very first line opens with the speaker’s choice on the road. It states that the road diverged into two separate paths. The setting of the road is in a “yellow wood”, and this is in keeping with what Robert Frost often wrote. He enjoyed making use of nature imagery when he wrote his poetry, and while this road should be taken as a metaphorical road, if we looked at it literally, we could see it as an actual country road. If this is the case, and the road was an actual, literal road, then the road would still be representative of something greater than the road itself.

The second line states that the speaker is sorry that he could not travel down both of these roads. This is where the idea of choice truly enters the scene. When we generally come across an actual fork in the road, we generally do not worry so much about which path we have taken, but the fact that the subject stood there and worried about which path to choose indicates something deeper about this particular choice. To take one path is to not take the other, and this choice is, therefore, a zero-sum game. If one is taken, the other can never be taken. What should he do? What will he do? What will you do if you come across a road like this?

The third line in this stanza indicates that he waited for a long time before he made his choice. The “long I stood” line is indicative of the wait, and a wait implies something. When we simply choose something quickly and move on, we can be fairly certain that whatever we chose was mostly inconsequential. If we need to make a real decision, a tough decision, we do not necessarily jump onto it with ease. Instead, we sit, and we consider it. We think about it and ponder our other options.

The next line continues this idea. It states that the speaker tried to look down these roads as far as he could see. When we make choices in the real world, or at least when we make choices of consequence, we usually try to think ahead.

Many people are impulsive in this world, and they are the type of people who may not understand The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, but the rest of us understand. If you have a tough choice to make, you might weigh the pros and cons, you might try to simulate how it would play out in your head, or you might play devil’s advocate between the options available to you. Ultimately though, you need to come to a decision.

In the case of the final line of this stanza, the speaker struggles with this decision. He sees that one of the roads appears to be less-traveled, and filled with more undergrowth. It is “the road less traveled”, which is also how many people describe this particular poem. The decision has been made in the poem at this point, and the next stanza deals with what this choice has meant for the speaker.

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,

The second stanza opens with the speaker making his decision. He has taken the “other” that is “just as fair”. This is a little confusing as a statement, and the confusion of it may have led to some of the above-mentioned confusion and misinterpretation that this poem has received from a number of people. Through this The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost analysis, we should be able to parse through some of the harder-to-understand aspects of the poem to figure out what it is trying to say.

The first line, where it states that this chosen path is one that is just as fair, gives way to the second line, in which it states that the chosen road has an even “better claim” to being chosen. It is treated like it is the better choice to have made.

The speaker, here, assures us that the correct path has been taken. The choice that has been made is one that is better. The road taken and the road not taken are binary choices, and the best choice has been made. This is confirmed as the “road less traveled” in the next line.

The third line of this stanza claims that the path the poet took was more “grassy” and “wanted wear”. This implies that the road the speaker chose was the one that was grassier and worn down. It was the unkempt path. It was the path taken by fewer people. It is here where we can find the beginnings of the idea of which path was better to take. However, this better path is one that is subjective.

When it comes to real choices, we are often given the safe choice, or the “path often taken”, or the harder path that is “the road seldom taken”. Do we play it safe? Do we take a chance? Do we gamble with our choices? And, in this stanza, it has thus far been alluded that the more unkempt path was chosen, the one that fewer people walk. The speaker is going his own way! The speaker is not following the ordinary path and doing what is expected of him. Instead, he is forging ahead on his own!

The next two lines bleed into each other because as he was “passing there” and through that chosen path, he thinks about how when he had been at the crossroads, that they were really worn down “about the same”. This is where the confusion appears to enter for many.

Upon first reading this poem, many presume that the speaker made the supposed “right” choice. The right choice, in this case, is the one that is less traveled. We should choose our path and not care about doing as others have done. In fact, we should actively fight against doing things the way that we know others have done similar things. We must do it ourselves!

This line throws all of that into disarray. Only upon choosing what he thought was the “path less traveled” did the speaker consider that the paths had actually looked about the same. The choice between these two was far more similar than he had originally believed. We often think of binary thoughts as being very distinct from one another, but that is not always the case. If you are given a choice between two different types of chocolate ice cream, they are both chocolate ice cream. Simply because there were two options does not mean that the choice was something major.

Stanza Three

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.

The third stanza is, perhaps, the one that has contributed to the confusion more than the others as it is a little harder to read and understand. It opens by remembering the path that had opened up before the speaker at the beginning of his journey. The diverging path in the woods had been laid out equally before him. It had appeared like a fresh and new choice that needed to be made, and it had seemed like something very clear-cut and obvious. He had chosen the path less traveled. He had made the choice that we should make if we wish to stand out above and beyond those around us, but the worry has set in at this point.

The second line affirms that the leaves he had seen in the path had not been trodden on, but were they both untrodden? The confusion and difficulty in determining which path had truly been the one that was the least traveled of the two has started to become apparent in the poem.

Before, the speaker had been quite certain of which was the path most often taken and which path was the one less taken. Things have now become more difficult, and this also makes sense. In real life, when we make a choice, we cannot truly know we have made the right choice. Could the other choice have been better? We are not magical beings who are able to gaze backward and forward in time and see the outcomes of choices before they have been made.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost tackles this dilemma head-on by confronting us with this reality. Did you make the right choice in doing what you did? Did the speaker in this poem really choose the path less traveled? They may have thought they chose the one less traveled, but did they?

The third line in this stanza reinforces some of the second line’s worries about what now lies behind the speaker. The choice has been made, and the fourth line’s statement that “way leads on to way” implies that the choice leads on to other choices that are made. When you choose one path in the metaphorical road of life, it fundamentally leads to other paths and other choices. There is no solitary decision to be made. Instead, there are multitudinous paths before us. They diverge into an intricate array of crisscrossing decisions, and the final line knows this.

The last line of this stanza states that the speaker doubted if he “should ever come back” to this fork in the road. It may not even be possible to come back to this choice in the future, but we often tell ourselves that we may be able to go back and choose again.

Nothing is set in stone, after all. We are the arbiters of our own existence. Or at least, this is what we tell ourselves. The speaker may think to himself that he could come back, but he knows that he won’t come back. There is no coming back from this.

However, when it comes to choices in the real world, we often define ourselves by them. Choices, and where we wind up in life, is an incredibly important thing. Did you wind up where you were supposed to wind up? No matter what happens, you will always have reached a certain point in life, but could things have been better? Could things have been worse? No matter what, we usually tell ourselves that we made the right choices. We chose correctly, right? We did. Others might not make the right choice, but we made the right decision.

Stanza Four

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.

We have finally reached the last stanza of The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. Here, we are confronted with the desire for making the correct choice. The reason is because the poem now looks far ahead into the future. In our lives, we often tell others about our choices, and the first line of this stanza opens with that because he states that he “shall be telling this” story, but “with a sigh”.

The sigh tells us something. When I used to teach this poem to teenagers, I would focus on this part. The speaker does not need to say something like “I’ll pretend that I made the right choice”, instead, what does a sigh signify? A sigh is a resignation. It can be for relief, but it is not in this case.

In this case, when the speaker sighs, he is doing so with something of a mistruth on his lips. He might not be lying at the moment, but he is bending the truth. He is saying what he has been led to believe that he is supposed to say.

The second line states that he will be telling this story far into the future, and the third line is similar to the very first line of the poem as a whole. He reaffirms that he came to two diverging paths in the woods, and he… and there’s a pause. The dash after the “I” indicates a pause. That pause goes with the sigh. The sigh is resignation, and the dash is the pause before the lie. Should he tell the truth? No. He should never tell the truth. He must uphold the myth of our personal decisions.

The second-last line lacks the pause or the sigh as he confidently states that he “took the one less traveled by”. He took the path that fewer people took. It is preferred when we do something like this. We are not meant to simply follow the herd! We are meant to make our own way in this world! We are meant to stand tall and proclaim that our choices in life have been the right ones!

The final line continues the myth. He chose the one less traveled and that “has made all the difference” in his life. However, we know that he is not certain whether or not he even took the path less traveled. He claims he has, but he has also paused, sighed, and considered that the two paths actually looked very similar to one another. This complicates the idea of choice in this poem.

“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is a poem about choices, but it isn’t actually a poem about making the right choice, about making the choice that sets you apart from others, but rather about how choices are unknowable things.

Did we actually make the right choice with what we did? Did we do the right thing? We cannot know because we lack magical powers, as has been stated already. We lack those kinds of abilities. We are not gods. We are simply people, and our choices might have been the right ones, but they also might have been the wrong ones. We will likely never know which. We can only hope that we have made the right ones and then, when we are older and telling the story of our lives, we can try and confidently tell others that we did indeed make the right choices in our lives.

“The Road Not Taken” is likely one of the best-known poems of the last century. This poem is well-known to pretty much anyone who is familiar with English poetry. This is also why we have performed this “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost analysis, because it might just be beneficial to a few out there who may need it. However, you may have your own interpretations of aspects of this poem, so what do you think of this text?

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the road not taken by robert frost.

The Road Not Taken is a poem by the noted writer, Robert Frost. The poem has come to be seen as one of the most significant texts of the 20th century. Its immense reach can be seen in the way that the poem can be found in practically every high school English curriculum. The poem is not particularly difficult to read or understand, and it was written in a more conversational style. All of these factors contributed to the poem being widely read and analyzed throughout the world.

Who Was Robert Frost?

Robert Frost was an American poet who was particularly well-known for his regionalist poetry that was strongly focused on rural life in the United States. His work is especially noted for drawing direct inspiration from the New England landscape, and its use of more colloquial language than is often found in poetry. His work has made him a quintessential American poet, and one of the most influential in the country.

What Is The Road Not Taken Rhyme Scheme?

The Road Not Taken is made up of four quintains, or five-line stanzas, and each of these stanzas follows the same basic rhyme scheme . They all use ABAAB. This rhyme scheme means that there are only two rhymes per stanza, and this heavier repetition of the first rhyme aids in the general rhythm of the poem.

What Type of Poem Is The Road Not Taken ?

The Road Not Taken is an example of a narrative poem. This type of poem is focused on telling a story, as the name suggests. Narrative poems can be any length and there are no limits on how they can approach their narratives. When we think of poetry, we usually think of it as having a more abstract presentation, such as discussing thoughts, feelings, places, and so on. Narrative poetry, on the other hand, often follows standard narrative conventions, such as having characters, rising action, and a climax.

What Is the Theme of The Road Not Taken ?

The Road Not Taken is focused on choices. The metaphor that the poem uses entails a road that forks, and so the speaker in the poem needs to choose between these two roads. They consider the road that they took and, by association, the road that they did not take. The road, and its divergence, is a metaphor for choices at large. How do we approach choices? What do we choose to do? Did we make the right choices? The generalizability of the poem’s theme has contributed to its universal appeal. We can all understand the difficulty that choices pose to us.

Justin van Huyssteen is a freelance writer, novelist, and academic originally from Cape Town, South Africa. At present, he has a bachelor’s degree in English and literary theory and an honor’s degree in literary theory. He is currently working towards his master’s degree in literary theory with a focus on animal studies, critical theory, and semiotics within literature. As a novelist and freelancer, he often writes under the pen name L.C. Lupus.

Justin’s preferred literary movements include modern and postmodern literature with literary fiction and genre fiction like sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, and horror being of particular interest. His academia extends to his interest in prose and narratology. He enjoys analyzing a variety of mediums through a literary lens, such as graphic novels, film, and video games.

Justin is working for artincontext.org as an author and content writer since 2022. He is responsible for all blog posts about architecture, literature and poetry.

Learn more about Justin van Huyssteen and the Art in Context Team .

Cite this Article

Justin, van Huyssteen, ““The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost Analysis – A Quick Summary.” Art in Context. October 16, 2023. URL: https://artincontext.org/the-road-not-taken-by-robert-frost-analysis/

van Huyssteen, J. (2023, 16 October). “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost Analysis – A Quick Summary. Art in Context. https://artincontext.org/the-road-not-taken-by-robert-frost-analysis/

van Huyssteen, Justin. ““The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost Analysis – A Quick Summary.” Art in Context , October 16, 2023. https://artincontext.org/the-road-not-taken-by-robert-frost-analysis/ .

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Read the iconic poem by Robert Frost alongside a video animated by TED-Ed, and discover additional reading materials, related poems, and educator resources to help you engage more deeply with the poem or teach it in the classroom.

The natural world has been one of the recurring subjects of poetry, frequently the primary one, in every age and every country. Yet we cannot easily define nature, which, as  Gary Snyder  points out in his preface to  No Nature  (1992), “will not fulfill our conceptions or assumptions” and “will dodge our expectations and theoretical models.” Yet the urge to describe the natural world — its various landscapes, its changing seasons, its surrounding phenomena — has been an inescapable part of the history of poetry.  Wendell Berry  provides a simple useful definition of nature poetry as poetry that “considers nature as subject matter and inspiration.”

Our concepts of nature are relative, historically determined. The nature poem is affected by ideology, by literary conventions as well as social and cultural ideas. Raymond Williams contends, “Nature is perhaps the most complex word in the language.” The term  nature  is itself contested now because it seems to assume an oversimplified relationship between the human and the environment. “Nature” has been the site of so many different naïve symbolisms, such as purity, escape, and savagery. That’s why poets and critics often refer to green poetry or environmental poetry, which presupposes a complicated interconnection between nature and humankind.

Read the rest of this essay by Edward Hirsch on nature and poetry .

Robert Frost :  Read a brief biography of this influential poet, who was born in San Francisco, California, in 1874.

Poems by Robert Frost :  Read more than eighty poems by Robert Frost, including the iconic “ Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening ” and “ Nothing Gold Can Stay .”

“The Road Not Taken: The Poem Everyone Loves and Everyone Gets Wrong” :  In this essay, David Orr discusses the history of Frost’s poem and a common misinterpretation of its meaning.

More Essays About Robert Frost :  Read more essays by poets—including Carol Frost and John Hollander—engaging with Frost’s work.

Related Lesson Plans :  Browse lesson plans and Teach This Poem activities related to the themes and topics presented in this poem.

Related Poems :  Read additional classic and contemporary poems exploring the themes of nature and choice.

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The Road Not Taken Summary by Robert Frost

Table of Contents

The poet while travelling on foot in the woods reaches a junction where two roads diverge. Immediately, he realizes that as a traveller travelling both the roads is impossible. Here two roads are meant two ways of life. The woods are yellow, which means that it probably falls and the leaves are turning yellow.

As it is impossible to travel both the roads, the poet stands there trying to choose which path he’s going to take. However, the poet wants to go down both paths and is thinking about it hard. He is staring down one road, trying to see where it goes. The small plants and greenery of the woods block his view.

The phrase could mean something like “as just as it is fair,” as in proper, righteous and equal. But this doesn’t quite apply to a road. “As just as fair” is an example of a simile. Then the poet decided to check the other path because he found the other road to be less travelled and grassy one. “Wanted wear” is an example of personification.

After travelling through the road, he found that both the roads are equally travelled. First, he found the first road to be the more travelled one, but then he says that both the roads to be equally travelled. The ‘as for that” refers to the path being less worn.

Lines 11-12

Here, again, the poet found both the paths looking same. Perhaps, he goes in the flashback. It was tough for him to recognize the real road as in the morning he was the first person to walk on the road.

He couldn’t decide the right path as no step had smashed the leaves on the roads to allow him to go for the right one. These lines are an example of imagery.

Lines 13-15

The poet here saves the first road for another day. He knows how “way leads” to another, and then another until you end up very far from where you started. The poet here saves the first road for another day. Then in the third, he doesn’t think he will ever be able to come back and take the other path, as much as he wishes he could.

This line is the example of the poet’s failure in choosing the right path. The word ‘sigh’ reflects that he is disappointed with the decision.

Lines 17-19

He accepts the fact that he is a failure in taking the right decision. ‘ Ages and ages’ is an example of alliteration. Perhaps, he chose the less travelled one.

The poet took the path that no one else did, and that is what has made the difference in his life that made him successful. However, a “difference” could mean success or utter failure.

The poem The Road Not Taken is made with a rhyme scheme of ABAAB. The poet in the poem decided to seize the day and express himself as an individual by choosing the road that was “less traveled by.”

Moreover, the narrator’s decision to choose the “less-travelled” path shows his courage. In terms of the beauty, both paths are equally “fair” .

The narrator only distinguishes the paths from one another after he has already selected one and traveled for many years through life. The Road Not Taken is one of Frost’ s most beloved poems and is frequently studied in high school literature classes.

• Play Quiz on The Road Not Taken
• Critical Analysis of The Road Not Taken
• 10 important questions on The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

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