02/04/2025
“The Road Not Taken” is among Frost’s most celebrated poems, yet it is widely misinterpreted, often taken as a simple ode to “following your own path.” In truth, the poem subtly critiques this notion. David Orr, in The Paris Review, described this misconception, pointing out:
“The poem’s speaker claims he will recount, someday, how he chose the less traveled road, yet he admits that the paths ‘equally lay / In leaves’ and ‘the passing there / Had worn them really about the same.’ Thus, the ‘less traveled’ road he plans to describe is actually just as traveled as the other. The two paths are indistinguishable.”
Frost originally wrote the poem as a playful jab at his friend Edward Thomas, who was famously indecisive during their walks, struggling to choose a path. In a New York Times review of Brian Hall’s 2008 biography, Fall of Frost, it was noted: “Whichever way they go, they’re sure to miss something good on the other path.” As for the “sigh” in the final stanza, it could suggest either regret or satisfaction. However, there is a significant contrast between the speaker’s present description of the paths and what he anticipates saying in the future. Frost’s biographer, Lawrance Thompson, recalls that Frost, before reading the poem aloud, once remarked, “You have to be careful with that one; it’s a tricky poem—very tricky,” hinting at its ironic undertones.
Thompson proposes that the narrator is someone who consistently expends energy regretting his choices, wistfully sighing over the appealing alternatives he declined. He also noted that when Frost introduced the poem, he often mentioned the speaker was inspired by Thomas, whom he described as “a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn’t go the other. He was hard on himself that way.”
