how can the theme of the poem be related to any individual person life (the road not taken)
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Analysis
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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 Road Not Taken” Summary
The speaker, walking through a forest whose leaves have turned yellow in autumn, comes to a fork in the road. The speaker, regretting that he or she is unable to travel by both roads (since he or she is, after all, just one person), stands at the fork in the road for a long time and tries to see where one of the paths leads. However, the speaker can't see very far because the forest is dense and the road is not straight.
The speaker takes the other path, judging it to be just as good a choice as the first, and supposing that it may even be the better option of the two, since it is grassy and looks less worn than the other path. Though, now that the speaker has actually walked on the second road, he or she thinks that in reality the two roads must have been more or less equally worn-in.
Reinforcing this statement, the speaker recalls that both roads were covered in leaves, which had not yet been turned black by foot traffic. The speaker exclaims that he or she is in fact just saving the first road, and will travel it at a later date, but then immediately contradicts him or herself with the acknowledgement that, in life, one road tends to lead onward to another, so it's therefore unlikely that he or she will ever actually get a chance to return to that first road.
The speaker imagines him or herself in the distant future, recounting, with a sigh, the story of making the choice of which road to take. Speaking as though looking back on his or her life from the future, the speaker states that he or she was faced with a choice between two roads and chose to take the road that was less traveled, and the consequences of that decision have made all the difference in his or her life.
“The Road Not Taken” Themes
Theme Choices and Uncertainty
Choices and Uncertainty
In "The Road Not Taken," the speaker describes him or herself as facing a choice between which of two roads to take. The speaker's choice functions as an extended metaphor for all the choices that the speaker—and all people—must make in life. Through the speaker's experience, the poem explores the nature of choices, and what it means to be a person forced to choose (as all people inevitably are).
The poem begins with the speaker recounting the experience of facing the choice of which road to take. The speaker's first emotion is "sorrow," as he or she regrets the reality that makes it impossible to "travel both" roads, or to experience both things. The poem makes clear that every choice involves the loss of opportunity and that choices are painful because they must be made with incomplete information. The speaker tries to gather as much information as possible by looking "down one [road] as far as I could," but there is a limit to what the speaker can see, as the road is "bent," meaning that it curves, leaving the rest of it out of sight. So the speaker, like anyone faced with a choice, must make a choice, but can't know enough to be sure which choice is the right one. The speaker, as a result, is paralyzed: "long I stood" contemplating which road to choose.
The speaker does eventually choose a road based on which one appears to have been less traveled, but the poem shows that making that choice doesn't actually solve the speaker's problem. Immediately after choosing a road, the speaker admits that the two roads were "worn... really about the same" and that both roads "equally lay" without any leaves "trodden black" by passersby. So the speaker has tried to choose the road that seemed less traveled, but couldn't tell which road was actually less traveled. By making a choice, the speaker will now never get the chance to experience the other road and can never know which was less traveled. The speaker hides from this psychic pain by announcing that he or she is just saving "the first [road] for another day!" But, again, reality sets in: "I doubted if I should ever come back." Every choice may be a beginning, but it is also an ending, and having to choose cuts off knowledge of the alternate choice, such that the person choosing will never know if they made the "right" choice.