'Two roads diverged in a wood'; 'I took the one less traveled by'. These ii lines have get famous since they were written, and they are widely quoted. But their meaning is also widely misunderstood. What did Robert Frost hateful when he wrote, 'Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, / I took the one less traveled past'?

'The Road Not Taken' is 1 of Robert Frost's about famous poems. It appeared in his first collection, Mountain Interval, in 1916, equally the opening verse form. For this reason, given it's the curtain-raiser for his career, it'due south natural and understandable that many readers take the poem to be Frost'southward statement of individualism equally a poet: he will take 'the road less travelled'. The metaphor of the road is one that immediately evokes a journey, not merely of the local or twenty-four hours-to-day kind, but of the life-defining sort: life as a journey, with many roads which we must travel forth, and with many culling paths which we must cull betwixt.

But when we analyse Frost's poem more closely, we realise how inaccurate an interpretation of '2 roads diverged in a woods' this actually is. Frost himself, 2 years earlier his death, lamented the mode readers and critics had misinterpreted the poem, which he called 'tricky'. Those ii roads diverged, forcing Frost to choose one, only this means that he also necessarily had to cull not to take the other. In opting for ane road, he was consciously rejecting the other.

Frost's poem describes how he came to a fork in the road and wished he could have taken both paths. Simply that isn't possible, of grade, and then with a heavy middle he had to choose betwixt these ii roads which diverged in a 'xanthous wood'. He took his time making his decision, because there seemed to be very little mode of telling which route might be the ameliorate one to plump for. The just thing that seems to have fabricated the chosen road preferable is the fact that information technology wasn't as well-trodden equally the other: its grass was less worn.

Just even this, information technology turns out, isn't true: it's merely Frost (or Frost's speaker, at to the lowest degree) retrospectively trying to way and furnish a reason for taking the road he did. In reality, he admits, there was no reason. The grass was equally worn on both roads. It was, after all, a more than or less arbitrary choice. Neither path appeared to have been walked down on that item day, as the presence of the leaves upon both roads suggested. (It's a 'yellow wood', recollect, summoning the colours of fall when the leaves fall from the trees.)

So, faced with these 2 roads – these two, to all intents and purposes, equal roads – Frost chose one on a whim. He told himself that, to even things out, he would come back another day and take the other one, but again, he immediately goes on to contradict and correct himself, stating that he knows he is but telling himself he will do this, only that in reality he almost certainly won't. He'll never come back to this spot.

And then Frost'due south lines about two roads that 'diverged in a wood' and his taking 'the ane less traveled by' is, for all that, just a narrative shaped afterward the effect: a story to tell people. The most famous lines in Frost's verse form are not some sincere announcement of the importance of choosing the more than original and less pop class of activity, of bucking the trend and standing autonomously from the crowd – although this is how Frost'south lines have been interpreted. His 'two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the i less traveled past' is not some rousing paean to individualism only an entirely fake and fabricated piece of performative narrative-weaving, as he tries to imbue his arbitrary determination with a semblance of significant. In truth, there is no meaning to it. No rhyme, if you lot will, or reason.

If we become back to the title of Frost'due south poem, we tin can encounter that that title gives u.s. a hint that this is the intended pregnant. The poem is titled 'The Route Not Taken', not 'The Road Less Travelled'. Frost's poem foregrounds that it is the road he didn't take which is the real subject of the verse form. When choosing one path over another, practice nosotros e'er regret our choice? We oft wonder about the choices we didn't make, the chances we didn't take. Nosotros regret non doing things all the fourth dimension.

But many decisions only allow us an either/or selection. They are binary. Should I marry this person or not marry them? Those are, baldly speaking, the only two choices, even if not marrying Ten leads to our marrying Y. Should I take this job or not take this job? In titling his poem 'The Road Not Taken' and making the choice betwixt two roads that diverged in a wood, Frost imparts a much greater meaning to his verse form, since information technology represents all such 'do X or don't do X' choices we face up in our lives. Hamlet had his: 'To be, or not to be'.

The poem's famous last lines are less a proud exclamation of individualism than a bittersweet example of the way we ever 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 unlike from the mainstream, that's the one I took, brave and independent take a chance-taker and road-taker that I am.' This isn't true, but it's the sort of cocky-myth-making we often go in for. But Frost's last lines are likewise nigh how taking 1 course means that we didn't have another grade, and that may make all the difference, and not e'er for the better.

What is besides less well-known than it should be virtually 'The Road Non Taken' is the fact that the poem may take begun life as Frost'south 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. Frost found Thomas to exist an indecisive human being, and after he'd written 'The Road Non Taken' merely before information technology was published, he sent it to Thomas, whose indecisiveness fifty-fifty extended to uncertainty over whether to follow Frost to the United States or to enlist in the regular 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 than seriously by Thomas, and by countless readers since. Indeed, Frost'due south verse form may fifty-fifty have been what inspired Thomas to brand up his mind and finally cull which 'road' to follow: he chose war over America, and 'The Road Not Taken' is, perhaps, what forced his paw. And for Thomas, the road he chose really did make a difference: tragically, he was killed during the Battle of Arras in 1917.