The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost’s 1915 poem is quoted a lot here at The Citadel.

It’s in The Guidon — on page 16, knobs! — which is the standard “how-to-be-a-cadet” book that must be memorized by all students.  It’s on posters and admissions materials.  Heck, it’s even referenced on the cover of a recent issue of The Citadel Magazine (mostly geared toward alumni), which carries the subtitle, “The Road Less Traveled.” Inside, on page 53, the famed lines of Frost’s poem appear to highlight the “uncommon paths to success” some of our graduates have taken:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by …

I sigh and shake my head when I see these things.

To be clear, it’s not that I disagree with the sentiment behind them.  Yes, The Citadel is an amazing place with many rather unique avenues to success in life. No question there. It’s just that, well, Frost’s poem does not mean what so many people apparently think it means.

And it’s not as if this misunderstanding is confined to the gates of El Cid. I’ve seen Frost’s poem misused in mainstream political speeches, on billboards in the rural Midwest, and on far too many Facebook or MySpace pages to count.

Indeed, I’d bet that at any given moment, someone, somewhere is misusing Frost’s “Road Not Taken.”  Call it Frost’s Law.

It’s sad to see, because Frost’s poem is a good one.  And it ain’t long.

So let’s read it, shall we?

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Good stuff.  Now, let’s do a bit of basic critical reading. 

Look at that first stanza again. Frost stands at a fork in the road, right?  Two roads diverging before him in a wood.  He’s got to choose one.  Pretty simple stuff.

Second stanza.  Look closely now. What differences did he discern between the possible paths?  One is “just as fair” as the other, and while one had “perhaps the better claim” due to lack of use, they were, actually, “about the same.”

Huh. Does that seem odd? Not what you expected?  Let’s read on.

In the third stanza Frost makes sure we didn’t miss the comparability of the two paths: “both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black.”  So which was the road less traveled? Neither, apparently.  They were equal in all respects, with nothing noticeable to differentiate them.  In fact, when you think about it, the road less traveled is the one Frost didn’t take: by virtue of walking down the one, he made them unequal, making his chosen path the one more traveled.

Now to the fourth stanza, a small part of which is the only bit most folks ever seem to read.  Not you, though.  You’re reading it all.  Proud of yourself yet? You will be. Check it out again:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 

Remember now: did he really take the road less traveled? No.  He did not. That much is simple (or should be). Only slightly more complex is his second claim, that it “made all the difference.” Did it? Think about this in the practical terms of the two paths forking in the wood.  He took the one (more traveled now, remember), and not the other. So how can he know what would have happened had he taken the other?

The answer, of course, is that he cannot.  It’s impossible.  Perhaps a tree would have fallen on his head and killed him.  Perhaps he would have run into a leprechaun giving away his pot of gold.  Perhaps the path would have wandered for a few hundred yards before rejoining the one he did choose to take.  It doesn’t really matter, since he never took it and he’ll thus never know.

It turns out, therefore, that the oft-quoted pithy bit — 

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

— is, well, not true. More than that, it is the willingly self-deceptive lie of an old man, sighing as he looks back wistfully at his younger self and imagines in his self-important smugness that he’s made all the right decisions in his life.

Like everyone else, Frost’s narrator thinks he’s different and therefore better than other people.  But it’s a lie. Beginning to end. He’s rewriting his own history.

A bit different from the popular interpretation of the poem, isn’t it?  And you feel better for knowing that, right? Right?