“The Road Not Taken” – A Commentary on Human Nature

In his poem “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost illustrates the complexities of choice  through the speaker’s encounter with a divergence of two identical roads, communicating the  poem’s theme that although human beings are shaped by the decisions they make, it is often  impossible to foresee the outcome of those choices. Through a metaphorical analysis of human  nature, Frost investigates the spurious disposition of the speaker’s claim of taking the road less  traveled, calling on Emersonian and Darwinian philosophy to comment on humans’ need to  elevate the impact they have on the course of their lives through an ironic justification of their  path selection. 

The speaker’s contradiction of the equality between the two roads builds upon his  unreliability and illustrates the motivations behind his overt lie in the last stanza. The speaker  encounters two closely similar paths, and he repeatedly purports their indistinguishability  throughout most of the poem. The speaker looks down one road, and then the other “as just as  fair” (6), and admits “the passing there / Had worn them really about the same” (9-10). He  further stresses the identical nature of the two paths that both “equally lay / In leaves no step had  trodden black” that morning (11-12). The speaker displays an indifferent tone in his account of  the two roads in the first three stanzas of the poem. However, in the last stanza, the speaker  contradicts his equal description of the roads when he asserts there is a difference between the  paths, and he took the one “less traveled,” to elevate his decision and justify his position in life  (19). Frost’s use of the word “sigh” (16) “signals the mockingly self-inflated tone of the last  stanza” (Elliott and Davidson). This highlights the fraudulent position the speaker plans to take  on “ages and ages hence” (17). The tone becomes meditative as the speaker weighs his two options with consideration. The presence of caesurae in the first two stanzas of the poem  emphasizes the vacillating nature of the speaker’s inner debate over the two roads. In underlining  the falsities of the speaker’s claim in the last stanza of the poem through a first-person point of  view, Frost comments on the motivations behind the speaker’s actions through a subtle but  suggestive analysis of human nature.  

Frost utilizes meter to convey his thematic message surrounding the motivations behind  decision-making, with lines that follow formal metrical patterns fostering a consistently  colloquial tone and converse breaks in this pattern reflecting the speaker’s conflict over choice  throughout the poem. Frost writes, nominally, in iambic tetrameter. Lines that follow iambic  meter reinforce the poem’s colloquial expressiveness, following the natural rhythm that everyday  discourse takes on. Frost’s use of blank-verse narrative form in the poem closely mimics natural  human speech in conversation, as the English language is iambic in nature. The use of  enjambment in the majority of lines strengthens this colloquial feel and keeps the poem  continuously flowing, paralleling the extended metaphor of the road as life that stretches across  the lines. The use of self-reflective diction, apparent in phrases like “having perhaps the better  claim” (7), “though as for that” (9), and “really about the same” (10) reflects the speaker’s  reconsideration of his decided path within the poem and furthers this compounded sense of  colloquialism. Frost’s interjection of “Oh” heightens the conversational feel of the poem and  remains consistent with the poem’s overall tone (13). The first line of the final quintain echoes  this sentiment when the speaker claims he will, in the future, recount this experience with “a  sigh” (16). Though the majority of the poem is iambic in nature, Frost begins “The Road Not  Taken” with a break in this meter and frequently challenges formal patterns throughout the poem. In the opening line “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” the third foot is anapestic (1).  This departure from a standard metrical pattern reflects the circumstance of the speaker, who  must choose between two paths. The poem consists of four quintains, all following the same  rhyme scheme, creating a sense of rounded thought and consideration. The variant anapestic feet  encourage the reader to pause and reflect on the poem’s meaning, setting the poem up for its  eventual shift in tone in the last stanza.  

Frost ironically comments on the autonomy of choice and flight from a world of fixed  limitations through Darwinian theory and the title of the poem itself, with the speaker’s  equivocating judgement of the two roads becoming a projection of his battle with impulse,  regret, and consciousness. Frost does not glorify the individuation the speaker believes he is  accomplishing by taking the road “less traveled” (19). Instead, Frost calls attention to the  fraudulent nature of the speaker’s claims in the last stanza and emphasizes the importance of the  road the speaker does not take. The title places emphasis on this other road, highlighting the  themes surrounding lost opportunities and the complexities of decision-making. The title refers  to “regret for a road of lost possibility and the eliminations and changes produced by  choice” (Faggen). The speaker’s desire to know what impact the other road would have made on  his life had he taken it, rather than the road he did take, makes the real difference in his  contemplation. The divergence of the roads for the speaker symbolizes the “psychological  representation of the developmental principle of divergence,” where Darwinian theory asserts the  survival of species depends on the divergence of individuals (Faggen). When the speaker  apologizes that he “could not travel both / And be one traveler,” Frost implies that the selection  of and continuation through a path permanently alters the speaker, and this value can be realized in taking either road (2-3). This evolutionary metaphor suggests Frost’s desire to connect the  possibilities of human experience and choice to fundamental principles of human nature.  Frost calls on Emersonian philosophy, in which “acting and being acted upon form  indistinguishable aspects of a single experience,” to investigate the questions of decision, choice,  and action throughout the poem (Richardson). The paradoxical nature of “The Road Not Taken”  suggests that “every action is in some degree intemperate [and] incalculable” (Richardson).  Although the roads may originally be nearly identical, “way leads on to way,” and soon the  traveler ends up in an entirely different position (14). Paths unfold themselves to their journeyers  as they are traveled, and there is no means of predicting their outcomes. Frost emphasizes this  concept of the limitations of choice throughout the poem, as there is no way of knowing if a  decision will truly make “all the difference” (20).  

The poem aims to propel readers past spurious distinctions between indistinguishable  paths and into philosophically fueled, self-reflective decision-making. Frost utilizes the speaker  as a vehicle to incentivize identification with the reader through an indecisive commonality. In  writing “The Road Not Taken,” Frost affirms the universality of human nature that drives the  inevitable decisions people make when stuck at a crossroads. The meaning of a person’s choices,  though originally seemingly less consequential, is revealed gradually as he/she travels through a  chosen path; a destination is only realized upon arrival. 

Works Cited  

Elliott, Emory, and Cathy N. Davidson. Columbia Literary History of the United States.  Columbia University Press, 1988.  

Faggen, Robert. Robert Frost and the Challenge of Darwin. University of Michigan Press, 1997.  Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation,  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken.  

Richardson, Mark. The Ordeal of Robert Frost: The Poet and His Poetics. University of Illinois  Press, 1997. 

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