Describe the dilemma that the narrator is in. What solution does he find?
Answers
Explanation:
I see the dilemma as it is presented in these lines:
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
You can only live one life. You make some choices early on, and you walk your particular path: "Way lead on to way." This thing leads to that thing, and before you know it, you're seventy. By then, you look back on your life and know there just isn't time left to choose another path and to experience where the road not take would have led you. That's life.
Poetry is all about interpretation. Lots of times we look for a specific interpretation as teachers, but part of reading well is reading in between the lines and digging out a personal meaning for yourself.
The dilemma as I see it (a mere interpreter) is the problem of choice. We make choices every day. Sometimes we get tired of these decisions and stress or struggle over actually getting a decision made. Sometimes the decisions are so insignificant that the choice doesn't even matter. Other times the decision "makes all the difference."
Frost's closing words demonstrate that he chose the road less traveled and that the result of that choice has made a difference. Lots of people do like to use those last few words to teach the concepts that sometimes choosing the hard working route in life earns you a great difference, a significant difference. Frost doesn't specify what the difference is, just that it exists.
The dilemma was simple: making a choice. The result of the dilemma is a much more complex unknown, what was that difference? I guess that's why he left it unknown, we should each seek to discover that for ourselves.