Frost found Thomas to be an indecisive man, and after he’d written ‘The Road Not Taken’ but before it was published, he sent it to Thomas, whose indecisiveness even extended to uncertainty over whether to follow Frost to the United States or to enlist in the army and go and fight in France. What is also less well-known than it should be about ‘The Road Not Taken’ is the fact that the poem may have begun life as Frost’s 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. But Frost’s final lines are also about how taking one course means that we didn’t take another course, and that may make all the difference, and not always for the better. ‘I kidded myself that one of the roads was less well-trodden and so, to be different from the mainstream, that’s the one I took, brave and independent risk-taker and road-taker that I am.’ This isn’t true, but it’s the sort of self-myth-making we often go in for. ![]() The poem’s famous final lines are less a proud assertion of individualism than a bittersweet example of the way we always rewrite our own histories to justify the decisions we make. ![]() Should I take this job or not take this job? In titling his poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ and making the choice between two roads that diverged in a wood, Frost imparts a much greater meaning to his poem, since it represents all such ‘do X or don’t do X’ choices we face in our lives. The poem, The Road Not Taken, is one of the famous poems written by an American poet: Robert Frost. Should I marry this person or not marry them? Those are, baldly speaking, the only two choices, even if not marrying X leads to our marrying Y. The theme of doubt is prominent in both Matthew Arnolds Dover Beach and Robert Frosts The Road Not Taken. 'The Road Not Taken' explores themes of life decisions, regrets, and. 'The Road Not Taken' has a regular ABAAB rhyme scheme and consists of 20 lines divided into four quintains. We regret not doing things all the time.īut many decisions only allow us an either/or option. 'The Road Not Taken' was written by American poet Robert Frost and published in his 1916 Mountain Interval poetry collection. ![]() When choosing one path over another, do we ever regret our choice? We often wonder about the choices we didn’t make, the chances we didn’t take. Frost’s poem foregrounds that it is the road he didn’t take which is the real subject of the poem. The poem is titled ‘The Road Not Taken’, not ‘The Road Less Travelled’. If we go back to the title of Frost’s poem, we can see that that title gives us a hint that this is the intended meaning.
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