the road not taken reflection essay

The Road Not Taken

By Robert Frost

Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’ explores life’s choices, opportunities, and the ensuing lingering regret of untaken paths.

Robert Frost

Nationality: American

His highly accessible work made him famous in his lifetime.

Key Poem Information

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Central Message: Regret lingers as we take on life's choices, shaping our journey amidst uncertainty

Themes: Desire , Disappointment , Journey

Speaker: Unknown

Emotions Evoked: Anxiety , Confusion , Pain , Regret , Stress , Worry

Poetic Form: Quintain

Time Period: 20th Century

Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken' captivates readers with its exploration of choice and regret as it continues to resonate deeply with readers while proving its lasting appeal by tapping into the timeless and universal human condition.

‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost ( Bio | Poems ) is quite a popular poem; unfortunately, however, its popularity comes mainly from the simple act of misreading. With this poem, Frost has given the world a piece of writing that every individual can relate to, especially when it comes to the concept of choices and opportunities in life.

A majority of the time, this poem is quoted and used with an interpretation that is not exactly “correct”. The popular belief is that Frost meant for this poem to be about hope, success, and defying the odds by choosing a path well, “less traveled by.” On the other hand, if the poem is reviewed, it is quite obvious that it has fairly the opposite connotation .

It is Robert Frost’s first poem in his book “Mountain Interval” (1916). A popular, pleasantly misconstrued poem since its release, its simplicity and way with words demonstrate the skill of Frost’s pen.

Consider the following points when reading the poem

Poet's context : Frost's close friendship with British writer Edward Thomas influenced the poem's creation. During Frost's time in England from 1912 to 1915, he and Thomas often took walks together, and the poem's inspiration came from an anecdote during one of these walks when Thomas was indecisive about which road to take. When Frost sent this poem to Thomas in a letter in 1915, he took it personally and enlisted himself in WWI; he was killed two years later in the war. It is significant to note the poem's origins and connection with such a tragic incident.
Changes in Republished Version: Frost's revisions in ' The Road Not Taken ' between its 1915 publication and its 1916 version in Mountain Interval reflect subtle shifts in language. The 1916 version, commonly used today, replaced "marked" with "kept" and swapped a comma in line eighteen for a dash. Frost often emphasized that this poem is tricky. Try to understand the significance of these alterations, interpreting how changes likely deepen the poem's complexity, suggesting nuanced shifts in meaning.
Speaker 's perspective : The poem's speaker embodies the turmoil of regret, often lamenting rejected choices. Interpreting their psychological state can yield diverse interpretations. Frost's speaker's struggles invite readers to reflect on their own experiences; relating the poem to one's own experiences can foster a deeper understanding of the poem's concerns and popularity.
Exploring Parallels and Intertextuality : Frost's poem's popularity prompts curiosity about its potential influence on Harry Turtledove's short story , ' The Road Not Taken ,' published in 1985. A comparative analysis between the two could analyze if the poem's exploration of choice, consequence, and fate influences the story's themes. Researching whether Turtledove read Frost's poem or borrowed the title can shed light on the potential intertextuality.

Explore The Road Not Taken

3 Detailed Analysis
4 Structure
5 Literary Devices
6 Tone and Mood
7 Symbolism
9 Historical Context
11 Similar Poetry

‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost ( Bio | Poems ) describes how the speaker struggles to choose between two roads diverging in the yellowish woods on an autumn morning.

In the poem, the individual arrives at a critical juncture in his life, arriving at crossroads at last near “a yellow wood.” As per him, the paths are equally well-traversed and yield anonymous outcomes. The individual comforts with a thought about returning, be if his path is unsuitable for him, yet in hindsight, he’s aware of the futility of such thought. Since his current path will bring upon separate paths in itself, disallowing any consequent reversal. The individual concludes on a melancholic note of how different circumstances and outcomes would have been, had it been the “other” path.

The Poem Analysis Take

Expert Insights by Jyoti Chopra

B.A. (Honors) and M.A. in English Literature

Despite acknowledging the two paths' equality or interchangeability, the speaker anticipates future retellings where they claim to have taken the less traveled path. The discrepancy between the speaker's initial observation and their anticipated future narrative underscores the human tendency to reinterpret past events to align with one's desired narrative, hinting at the psychological phenomenon of memory distortion wherein memories undergo reconstruction during recall, often to fit desired identities and self-perceptions of who individuals are. Frost's speaker's projection of a future narrative exemplifies this phenomenon, revealing the intricate interplay between memory, identity, imagination, and narrative construction in shaping one's perception of reality, developing a dynamic of subjective and objective reality. The poem shows that our choices might shape our lives, but our perception of those choices shapes our reality regardless of objective truth. Most importantly, the speaker prognosticates his future recollection of the event, acknowledging the forthcoming retelling of this moment. This self-awareness, juxtaposed with recognizing the identical nature of the two diverging paths, further accentuates the intricate workings of memory distortion while hinting at the power of fate or predetermined paths, echoing determinism philosophy and the dilemma of choice and freedom, raising questions about the extent to which humans truly possess agency.

Robert Frost’s poetic masterpiece is arguably the most infamously misunderstood poem as of yet. Marrying elements of form and content, arresting artistic phraseology and metaphors , the poem is mostly read without being understood. The archetypal conundrum is the primary attraction of the poem, readers instantly relate to their personal experiences.

Forks and woods are used as metaphorical devices relating to decisions and crises. Similar forks are representative of everlasting struggle against fate and free will. Since humans are free to select as per their will, their fate is unknown to them.

‘The Road Not Taken’ actually steers clear of advising on selecting a definitive path. Frost’s take on this is slightly complicated. The grassy roads and yellow woods represent the present as the individual views from a future perspective. This self-realization is pathetic and ironic in itself. The future self will regret first his decision about taking the road less traveled on. In hindsight, his regret is everlasting in this case point.

Detailed Analysis

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;

‘A Road Not Taken’ opens with strong imagery , because of the diction used to depict two physical roads separating from each other in “a yellow wood.” It is observably a forest that is showcasing the colors of autumn.

Line two is hasty to display the theme of regret, by revealing that the individual is “sorry” before he even decides which road to take. We basically find ourselves observing a very important moment, where he has to make a decision that is evidently difficult for him.

Lines three through five, express that the individual is trying to see as far as he can down each road, to help him decide which one he should choose to take.

Let’s thoroughly analyze the lines and their meaning below.

Lines 1–2

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both

The first two lines of this stanza introduce the dilemma that every human faces, not once, but multiple times in his or her life; the dilemma of choice. We as people go through many circumstances and experiences in our lives, and one of them is choosing between two (or more) paths.

This is experienced literally: in the roads we take and the routes we walk daily, and figuratively: when we come to points in our lives where we must make decisions for our next steps, based on the opportunities presented to us. And like the character in ‘The Road Not Taken,’ oftentimes, we are disappointed that we cannot hold on to, and experience the consequences of every opportunity that is presented to us. In order to gain some things in life, we must let others go.

Lines 3–5

And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;

By having the character in the poem examine the roads ahead of him, Frost is emphasizing that we all try our best to guess what lays ahead for us in every opportunity that we are presented in an attempt to find some control and later comfort over our final decisions. We like to take our time in order to make informed decisions so we can justify our choices when the regret of missing out on the other “roads” starts to haunt us.

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,

In this second stanza, lines six through eight: the individual in ‘The Road Not Taken’ finally makes a decision and chooses a road that he thinks and believes is better, because it looked like not many people had walked on it before.

However, in lines nine and ten, he is quick to add that the other road looked equally used in comparison to the one he chose, so it really was not as less traveled as he was telling himself.

Lines 6–7

Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim,

These lines are important because they clarify the common misunderstanding that one road was less traveled than the other since the character clearly states that both roads were “really about the same.” The diction in this stanza portrays the uncertainty of the character as he tries to justify to himself that his decision is the right one for him; and much like anyone else, he is trying to realistically weigh the outcomes of both roads.

Lines 8–10

Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

The important idea to note in these lines is that the character claimed the road he chose was better because it “wanted wear” meaning that it was tempting him. He felt that the road he chose “wanted” to be walked on by him. This underlines the nature of people in general, that we will always choose the path which seems attractive and is of interest to us, even if both paths have the equal potential of getting us to wherever it is we are headed.

That said the word “want” has historically been used to represent a lack of something. For example “the house was in want of repair” so perhaps the suggestion here is that the path is overgrown because it is less travelled.

Either way no matter where we end up, and how informed, tempting, and satisfying our choices are, we will always wonder about the “what ifs” and the “could have beens” of the other opportunities that we left behind.

Stanza Three

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.

In the third stanza, Robert Frost ( Bio | Poems ) mentions in lines eleven and twelve that at the moment that this individual was making his decision, both paths were nearly identical. No one had stepped through to disturb the leaves on both roads.

Line thirteen is an important point in ‘The Road Not Taken’ as this is when the individual finalizes his decision of leaving the other road, for perhaps another time.

Lines fourteen and fifteen give us a glimpse of his doubts. He honestly confesses to himself that it’s highly unlikely he will come back to travel this other road because he knows as he moves forward he will continue to find other paths taking him further and further away from this point, where he is standing at the moment.

Lines 11–12

And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black.

The lines show us that this character is truly being honest with himself, as he makes the crucial decision of which road to take. His honesty is a reality check as well as a means of making a final decision. He notices that both choices lay equally in front of him and none of these choices have been “trodden black”.

Sometimes in life, when we reach a fork, we are able to make quick decisions based on what we learned from other people’s experiences. These experiences then leave marks in the choices that we have, these marks then form our bias towards or against that path. When we encounter choices in our lives where we find that the leaves are not “trodden black” by what we learned from the people around us, it becomes harder to decide between them, just like the situation of the character in ‘The Road Not Taken’ .

Lines 13–15

Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

After making his decision, he exclaims that he will leave the first choice for another day. Then he honestly tells himself that if he lets this road go now, there is no coming back. There are many defining decisions in our life that shape our future and sometimes when we select an option in these moments, they change the course of our life and there’s no turning back. That is where the regret of not exploring our other options disturbs us.

Stanza Four

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.

In this last stanza, lines sixteen and seventeen, the individual predicts that one day far into the future, he knows will tell the story of this decision that he is now making.

Lines eighteen and nineteen expose that he intends to lie and claim he took the less-traveled road. In reality, both were equally traveled.

Finally, the last line expresses that the individual is also planning to claim that his choice to take this less traveled road made all the difference, in where he will be standing at the time.

Lines 16–17

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence:

These lines of the last stanza highlight the nature of our regrets. When it comes to tough decisions in our lives, we always know that no matter what we finally choose, eventually, we will regret not being able to try the possibility that was left uncharted by us.

In this stanza, the character is already imagining the regret he will feel and decides that he will not be honest when he retells the story of his decision, as it will not validate his selection of the road if he showcases his regret by stating that an equal opportunity could have landed him elsewhere in life.

Lines 18–20

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

He decides he will tell people he chose the road that was “less traveled by” to come across as a person who took a chance and succeeded in life. In reality, the character is trying to convince himself that when he shares his life experiences and distorts the truth, it will seem that taking this road “made all the difference”.

This teaches readers that they never know where life will take them, so preplanning what the end of the road looks like for themselves, and building regret is silly especially if they haven’t even started the journey in the first place. Life is about the paths you do choose to walk through, not about “the road not taken.”

Robert Frost ( Bio | Poems ) has used an interesting style in ‘The Road Not Taken’ . He works within the form, but at times, the form works within his style. Using variation and his brand of words, Robert Frost’s poems followed a unique composition. At times, he created forms to suit his poetry.

He has a general tendency to work within and without boundaries, carving memorable, identifiable, and idiosyncratic poetry. In his early years, he perfected the art of “sound of sense”, bringing raw sensory perception to a human mind. The sound of words forms imagery due to the form of words and sound of sense.

Robert Frost ( Bio | Poems ) has penned the poem in the first-person point of view . So, it’s a lyric poem . It comprises five verses encapsulated in four stanzas . So, there are a total of 20 lines in the text. Let’s have a look at the rhyme scheme and meter of this piece.

Rhyme Scheme

This poem follows a set rhyme scheme. In each quintain , the rhyming convention employed is ABAAB. It means that there are two sets of rhymes . The sound with which the first line ends occurs again in the third and fourth lines. While the second and last lines rhyme together.

For example, let’s have a look at the rhyme scheme of the first stanza.

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 ;

In the first line, “wood” rhymes with the words, “stood” and “could” present in the third and fourth lines. The second line ends with “both”. For rhyming, the poet chooses the word “undergrowth” in the last line. The same scheme is followed throughout the poem. There are no such exceptions.

Each line of this piece consists of nine syllables. Some lines contain a syllable more or less than the average syllable count. While reading the text, the stress generally falls on the second syllable of each foot. So, the overall poem is composed of iambic tetrameter . It means there are a total of four iambs in every line. However, there are a few metrical variations as well.

Let’s take the first stanza and scan it metrically.

Two roads / di- verged / in a yel -/low wood , And sor -/ry I / could not tra -/vel both And be / one tra -/ve-ler, long / I stood And looked / down one / as far / as I could To where / it bent / in the un -/der- growth ;

From the scansion of the first stanza, it is clear that Frost also uses a few anapests here and there throughout the poem. There are a total of four feet in each line. As the majority of the feet are composed of iambs, the dominant meter of this piece is the iambic tetrameter.

Literary Devices

Frost uses several literary devices in ‘The Road Not Taken’ . To begin with, he uses anaphora in the second, third, and fourth lines of the first stanza. Another important device of this piece is enjambment . It can be seen in the third and fourth lines. Using this device, he maintains the flow in between the lines as well as connects them internally.

Readers can find the use of metonymy in the phrase, “a yellow wood”. It refers to the season, autumn, and its effect on nature. There is a symbol in the usage of the word, “undergrowth”. It stands for the undiscovered regions of the future.

In the second stanza, readers can find the use of irony in this line, “And having perhaps the better claim.” This device is explained further below. Apart from that, Frost uses alliteration in the phrase, “wanted wear”.

The third stanza presents an inversion or hyperbaton in this line, “In leaves no step had trodden black.” The line also contains a synecdoche . In the following line, readers can find a rhetorical exclamation.

In the last stanza, the poet uses repetition for emphasizing a particular idea. For example, the phrase, “ages and ages” emphasizes the continuity of life’s journey. While the repetition of the word, “I” in the end and beginning of the third and fourth lines are meant for the sake of highlighting the speaker’s hesitation. Such repetition is also known as anadiplosis . Lastly, the poem ends with a paradox .

Frost uses several metaphors in this poem to bring home his innovative ideas. For example, the title of the poem, ‘The Road Not Taken’ contains a metaphor . In it, the “road” is a metaphor for the choice we make.

Moving on to the text, there is another metaphor in the “yellow wood”. In this phrase, the poet implicitly compares the idea of change to the yellowish wood. He compares the speaker of this piece to a traveler who is struck while choosing the best option to carry on his journey.

Likewise, readers can find another metaphor in the last stanza. Here, the road “less traveled by” is a metaphor for the choices less preferred by humans. It refers to unconventional things that pragmatic society doesn’t follow at all. However, some people choose such unconventional options. So, in the speaker’s case, he has not opted for the rarest choice.

The ironic undertone is inexorable. As he writes,

The individual anticipates insincerity in his future, looking in retrospect later on. He’s aware that he will be far from correct and even hypocritical at times, looking at his life.

Furthermore, he is fully aware that his future self will ultimately deny his past self’s decision, asserting it strongly. In essence, there’s no definitive true path here. As a result, what lies on the other path may trouble an individual with remnant feelings of guilt afterward.

With ironic undertones throughout, the poem contains hints of remorse due to choosing a path without much knowledge about either. Along the way, the individual wonders about the other path and what’s irrevocably lost in deselecting it.

The use of imagery, in this piece, makes it an interesting read. It helps readers to imagine the plot of this poem. There is no unnecessary information in the text. Frost begins directly with the primary image of the poem that is of the “two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” By using this visual imagery filled with the color of autumn, the poet depicts the place where his speaker is struggling to make a decision.

He further describes that the roads bent in the undergrowth. It means that the speaker cannot see what is there ahead of the road. In this way, Frost paints a beautiful picture of two long roads going in two different directions in the woods.

Readers can find more secondary details, integral to the main image, in the following stanzas. According to the speaker, the roads more or less look the same. Grasses cover them and one of them is less traveled than the other. Besides, some pale leaves are lying on the road. On one road, he can see trodden, black leaves. While he cannot see such leaves on the other road.

Providing this description, Frost tries to depict two ideas through these images. The first idea is of the choice that one can make easily by learning from the experience of others. Secondly, the image of the less trodden road depicts a way that can be less traveled, but it is less discovered by others.

Tone and Mood

To understand the tone and mood of this poem, readers have to look for the words that have emotions associated with them. One such word appears at the very beginning of the second line. The speaker says, “sorry” for not being able to travel on both roads. How does this particular word influence the poem’s tone and mood?

First of all, it tells readers that the speaker is not confident enough to make a decision. Therefore he feels sorry for himself. It reflects his mental state as well as the poem’s mood that is a little bit drifting towards the lethargic state of mind. Besides, the tone is emotive but not direct as it lacks confidence.

Another phrase, “long I stood” prolongs the mood of indecisiveness and confusion. The tone follows the mood and it changes into an introspective one.

In the following stanza, the word “perhaps” in the second line depicts the tone of dilemma. The confused mood of the speaker also confuses the readers. Moving on to the following stanzas, the individual becomes comparably confident yet his tone reflects a sense of grief as he thinks the other road might be better than the one he is about to walk on.

The infamous poem is rich with simplistic literal symbolism . Frost sets up a fictional stage for an individual upon which he sets the direction of his life with irreparable consequences. It’s a metaphor for people juggling with lifelong decisions. Seemingly an obvious poem, ‘The Road Not Taken’ has been subjective, catering to multiple interpretations. According to Robert Frost ( Bio | Poems ) himself:

You have to be careful of that one; it’s a tricky poem—very tricky.

In this piece, readers have to be aware of the use of symbols . The first dilemma that comes across while reading the text is about the actual symbolic significance of the two roads. These roads do not refer to two different paths. Rather Frost points at two superficially identical roads symbolizing the choices a person has to make. He can only choose any one of them as it is literally impossible to be “one traveler” on both roads. Besides, readers can find another symbol in “a yellow wood”. It refers to the idea of change.

The thematic idea of ‘The Road Not Taken’ intrinsically lies in “ carpe diem ”, judging by its nuance. In conventional carpe diem poems, readers can find that the speaker is urging one to seize the moment and live in the present. Likewise, in this poem, the poet presents a person who is not sure about what to do. He thinks about the future so he cannot make a decision based on the present scenario.

This piece also taps on several other themes such as choice, uncertainty, indecision, fate, and over-thinking. The main theme of this piece is choice and uncertainty. In this poem, the speaker has to make a choice and he is uncertain about the best one. He thinks what he will choose cannot be suitable for him.

The next theme that can be found is indecision. Readers can find this theme in the lines such as, “Then look at the other, as just as fair,/ And having perhaps the better claim.” Right after these lines, the speaker says both of them are “really about the same.” That’s why he struggles with indecision.

It also seems that the speaker is a fatalist. He relies on it more than the present moment. This mindset creates more confusion in his life. Last but not least is overthinking. This theme is present throughout this piece. Here, the narrator has to make a simple decision. But, he thinks more than what is necessary. It leads to all the confusion not only in his case but also in the case of readers.

Historical Context

Robert Frost ‘s ‘The Road Not Taken’ depicts the poet or individual looking in retrospect and contemplating upon past decisions. As per a biographical account by Lawrence Thompson, “Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph”, the poem was based on his Welsh pal named Edward Thomas. According to him, his friend was always regretful of his decision, irrespective of the road taken.

Considering himself as a regional poet, New England has been used as a recurring location in Robert Frost’s poems . He moved to New Hampshire in his early teens. As a result, the rich culture, vivid imagery, history, and landscape are reflected in his published work. Elements such as orchards, forests, fields, and small towns are observed commonly. His narrators are often close to nature, wandering in woods (Read ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ ), in snowstorms, and picking apples (Refer to ‘After Apple-Picking’ ).

It is a narrative poem as it tells a story of a speaker who was struggling to choose on a morning. This poem also describes the mindset of the central character in metered verse . Besides, it is told from the first-person point of view . So, it’s a lyric with a set rhyming and metrical scheme.

From 1912 to 1915, Robert Frost lived in England. There he developed a friendship with the poet Edward Thomas. Often they went out for walks. One day, as they were walking they came across two roads diverging in different directions. Thomas was indecisive about which way to take. In 1915, when Frost returned to New Hampshire, he wrote the verses of ‘The Road Not Taken’ recounting this event. He sent the copy to Thomas and it compelled him to get rid of his indecisiveness concerning other things of his life.

The poem was first published in the August 1915 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. It was later published in Frost’s poetry collection ‘Mountain Interval’ (1916) as its first poem.

The poem is titled, ‘The Road Not Taken,’ for an interesting reason. In the poem, the road that is not taken by the speaker is the one that is interestingly similar to the other road he takes. The poet mentions the first road in the title to emphasize the dominant thought of the speaker ’s mind. If there is only one road, there won’t be any problem. As there are two options, he struggles to make a decision and suffers through prolonged indecisiveness. Even if he takes a path (that may be suitable for him), he will still be thinking of the other one. We often think in this pattern. So, the poet advises us not to be engrossed in such thoughts.

The phrase “a yellow wood” symbolizes the abstract idea of change. It is also a symbol of the season, Autumn. The roads diverged in the woods. So, it means that no matter what road the speaker takes, there will be a change in his life. It is up to him how he reacts to it.

‘The Road Not Taken’ is about regret. In a superficial reading, it may seem that the poet is appreciating the speaker ’s decision. However, analyzing the text thoroughly will reveal that the speaker regrets the choice he makes even before its actual implementation.

The poetic persona doubts if he should ever come back or not. If he takes a road, he has to follow wherever it takes him. There will be ways that will lead him to other ways. In the process, he won’t have enough time to return at this juncture and choose ‘the road not taken.’

Robert Frost’s speaker chose the road less traveled as he had to make a decision. Otherwise, he would get stuck at that place forever. So, for the sake of continuing the journey of life, he took the other road, less traveled. He might do better that way, or it could prove futile. No matter what happened to him, he had to make a decision.

Similar Poetry

Here is a list of a few poems that similarly showcase the themes present in Robert Frost’s poem, ‘The Road Not Taken.’

‘Song of the Open Road ‘ by Walt Whitman ( Bio | Poems ) – It’s one of the best-known poems of Walt Whitman . This poem describes a trip the speaker takes to learn about himself and enjoy the journey to an unknown destination.
‘ There is Pleasure in the Pathless Woods’ by Lord Byron ( Bio | Poems ) – It’s one of the best-loved poems of Byron . This poem reflects a speaker’s strong desire for solitude and peace.
‘The Road Goes Ever On’ by J.R.R. Tolkien ( Bio | Poems ) – It’s among the popular poems of J.R.R. Tolkien . This poem explores the themes of possibilities in life and hope.
‘ The Way Through the Woods’ by Rudyard Kipling ( Bio | Poems ) – It’s one of the best Rudyard Kipling poems . This poem describes the changes that have come over one particular plot of forest.

You can also read about these raw anxiety poems and the best English language poems ever .

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I noticed another aspect that the author has specifically chosen yellow paths, not red as one would see in maple trees in autumn. It suggests that these trees may be alder or birch trees which are considered pioneer species. Perhaps it was meant to signify that the woods themselves were new as “No man can step into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and it is not the same man.” Maybe he wanted to show that every choice and experience is entirely unique and there is no road less travelled by for all of them lie untrodden waiting and growing patiently for us to cross them and then be converted to ashes.

HEY, i dont get the structure part, kinda just waffled that part ngl

wait, you waffled or we did?

i dont understand the paragraph about structure

It’s basically just saying that Frost could often be subversive. That he used common forms but then altered them…often for effect.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Road Not Taken — The Main Message In Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken

The Main Message in Robert Frost’s The Road not Taken

Categories: Poetry Robert Frost The Road Not Taken

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Published: Feb 8, 2022

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Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken: Meaning and Analysis

General Education

Robert Frost is arguably one of the most well-known American poets of all time, so it’s not surprising that his work is taught in high schools and colleges across the nation. Because he’s so famous, chances are you’ve encountered “The Road Not Taken” before .

We’re here to help you build a deeper understanding of “The Road Not Taken.” To help you learn what Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” poem is all about, we’ll cover the following in this article:

A brief intro to the poet, Robert Frost
Information about the poem’s background
“The Road Not Taken” meaning
“The Road Not Taken” analysis, including the top two themes in the poem
The poetic devices in “The Road Not Taken” that you need to know

There’s a lot to talk about, so let’s get going!

Robert Frost is widely recognized as one of the most influential American poets of the 20th century. (Sneha Raushan/ Wikimedia )

Robert Frost Biography

Robert Frost was born in 1874 in San Francisco, California. His father was a newspaper editor (a profession Frost later practiced himself, among others), and his mother was a teacher and Scottish immigrant. When he was about ten years old, his family moved to Massachusetts to be near his grandfather, who owned a sawmill. Frost was named both the valedictorian and the “class poet” of his high school graduating class ...and two years later published his first poem, “My Butterfly: An Elegy,” in the New York Independent magazine.

At this point, Frost knew he wanted to be a poet. But unfortunately, the next segment of Frost’s life would be marked by upheaval . He attended both Dartmouth and Harvard, but dropped out of both before graduating. His poetry wasn’t gaining traction in the United States, either. To complicate matters further, Frost and his wife, Elinor, suffered personal tragedy when two of their six children died in infancy.

In 1900, feeling frustrated by his job prospects and a lack of traction in his poetry career, Frost moved his family to a farm left to him by his grandfather in Derry, New Hampshire. Frost would live there for nine years, and many of his most famous early poems were written before his morning chores while tending to the farm . But Frost’s poetry was still largely overlooked by American publishers. Consequently, Frost decided to sell the farm in 1911 and moved his family to London. It was there he published his first anthology of poetry, A Boy’s Will, in 1913 .

Frost’s second anthology, North of Boston, was published in 1914 and found massive success in England. Finally, after years of struggle, Frost became a famous poet essentially overnight. In order to avoid WWI, Frost returned to the U.S. in 1915 and began teaching at Amherst College and the University of Michigan , all the while continuing to write poetry. He received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and became the public face of 20th century American poetry . Late in life, at 86 years old, Robert Frost also became the first inaugural poet at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1960.

Throughout his career, Frost never strayed far from old-fashioned, pastoral poetry, despite the fact that newer American poets moved in a more experimental direction. Frost’s poetry continued to focus on rural New England life up until his death in 1963.

Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken” Poem

“The Road Not Taken” is a narrative poem , meaning it is a poem that tells a story. It was written in 1915 as a joke for Frost’s friend, Edward Thomas. Frost and Thomas were fond of hiking together, and Thomas often had trouble making up his mind which trail they should follow. (Yes, that’s right: one of the most famous American poems was originally written as a goofy private joke between two friends!)

Frost first read it to some college students who, to his surprise, thought it a very serious poem. “The Road Not Taken” was first published in the August 1915 issue of The Atlantic Monthly , and then was re-published as the opening poem in his poetry collection Mountain Interval the next year.

The full text of the poem is below.

“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost

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.

Frost's most famous poem got its start as part of a letter sent to his best friend on the eve of World War I.

The Background Behind “The Road Not Taken” Poem

“The Road Not Taken” has become well known for its perceived encouragement to take the “[road] less traveled by.” In other words, many people interpret this poem as a call to blaze new trails and break away from the status quo. This is partly why lots of people misremember the poem’s title as “The Road Less Travelled.”

This interpretation of “The Road Not Taken” is debatable (more on that later), but it was enough to inspire Frost’s friend Edward Thomas to make a very grave decision to fight in World War I.

Frost and Thomas were great friends while Frost lived in England, both of them were well-read and very interested in nature. They frequently took long walks together , observing nature in the English countryside. However, Frost’s time in England ended in 1915 when World War I was on the verge of breaking out. He returned to the United States to avoid the war and fully expected Thomas to follow him.

Thomas did not. Frost’s poem came in the mail as Thomas was deciding whether to leave Europe or to participate in the war effort. While “The Road Not Taken” wasn’t the only thing that made Thomas enlist and fight in World War I, it was a factor in his decision. Thomas, regretting his lack of achievement compared to his good friend Frost and feeling that the poem mocked his indecisiveness, decided to take initiative and fight for his country. Unfortunately, Thomas was killed at the Battle of Arras on April 9, 1917.

Thomas was inspired to take “the road not taken” because of Frost’s poem. The same is true for many people who’ve read the poem since it was first published in 1915. The concept of taking a “road less traveled'' seems to advocate for individuality and perseverance , both of which are considered central to American culture. The poem has been republished thousands upon thousands of times and has inspired everything from self-help books to car commercials .

Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken” Analysis: Meaning and Themes

To help you understand the significance of Robert Frost’s poetry, we’ll break down the overall meaning and major themes of the poem in our “The Road Not Taken” analysis below.

But before we do, go back and reread the poem. Once you have that done, come back here...and we can get started!

Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken” Meaning

“The Road Not Taken” is a poem that argues for the importance of our choices, both big and small, since they shape our journey through life . For Frost, the most important decisions we make aren’t the ones we spend tons of time thinking about, like who we have relationships with , where we go to college , or what our future career should be . Instead, Frost’s poem posits that the small choices we make each and every day also have big impacts on our lives. Each decision we make sets us upon a path that we may not understand the importance of until much, much later.

This theme is reflected throughout the poem. For instance, the poem begins with a speaker placing us in a scene, specifically at the point where two roads break away from each other in the middle of a “yellow wood.”

The speaker is sorry they cannot go both directions and still “be one traveler,” which is to say that they cannot live two divergent lives and still be one single person . In other words, the speaker can’t “have their cake and eat it, too.” The speaker has to choose one direction to go down, because like in life, making a decision often means that other doors are subsequently shut for you.

For example, if you choose to go to college at UCLA, that means you’re also choosing not to go to college elsewhere. You’ll never know what it would be like to go to the University of Michigan or as a freshman straight out of high school because you made a different choice. But this is true for smaller, day-to-day decisions as well. Choosing who you spend time with, how hard you study, and what hobbies your pursue are examples of smaller choices that also shape your future, too.

The speaker of the poem understands that . They stand at the crossroads of these two paths for a long time, contemplating their choice. First, they stare down one path as far as he or she can, to where it trails off into the undergrowth. The speaker then decides to take the other path, which they state is just as “fair,” meaning just as attractive as the first. The narrator states that the second path “wanted wear,” meaning that it was slightly more overgrown than the first path.

But more importantly, no matter which path the speaker takes, they know they’re committed to follow it wherever it may lead. We see that in this stanza:

While the speaker says they “saved the first” path for “another day” to make them feel better about their decision, the next two lines show that the speaker realizes they probably won’t be able to double back and take the first path, no matter where the second one leads. Just like in life, each path leads to another path, and then another. In other words, the decisions we make in the moment add up and influence where we end up in life--and we don’t really get a “redo” on.

After choosing their path, the speaker says they look forward to a day far in the future when, “with a sigh,” they’ll tell people about taking the road “less traveled by,/And that has made all the difference.”

Does this mean that taking the one less traveled has “made all the difference” in a good way?

Saying so “with a sigh” doesn’t necessarily sound like a good thing. The poem isn’t at all clear on whether or not taking the less traveled path was a good choice or a bad choice . So while the poem is clear that all of our choices shape the path we take in life, it’s more ambiguous about whether choosing “less traveled” paths is a good thing or not. That’s up to readers to decide!

Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken” Theme 1: The Power of Hindsight

This brings us to our first theme: how hindsight gives our choices power.

The speaker begins at a point of bifurcation (which is a fancy way of saying “break into two branches”). As readers, we’re meant to take the poem both as a literal story about someone in the woods trying to decide which way to go, as well as a metaphor about how our life choices are like divergent paths in the woods.

Like we mentioned earlier, the poem is clear that you can’t take two paths and still “be one traveler,” nor can you be certain that you’ll ever get a chance to test out your other options. That’s because every choice you make leads to more choices, all of which lead you further and further from our starting point.

However, the poem also suggests that while the choices we make are important, how we interpret these choices is what really makes us who we are. We see this in the last lines of the poem, which read:

I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

Essentially, the speaker is saying that later in life he will look back in time and see that moment as one of great significance. But we can only know which choices matter the most through the power of retrospection. It’s like the old saying goes: hindsight is 20/20!

Here’s what frost means: when we’re making choices in life, they might seem inconsequential or like they’re not that big of a deal. But once time passes and we’ve journeyed down our path a little farther, we can look back into the past and see which choices have shaped us the most. And oftentimes, those choices aren’t the ones we think are most important in the moment. The clarity and wisdom of hindsight allows us to realize that doing something like taking the path “less traveled by” has impacted our lives immensely.

"The Road Not Taken" is also about our perspective...and how hindsight helps us reconsider our past decision.

Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken” Theme 2: Perspective and Memory

The other major theme in “The Road Not Taken” is how our individual perspective.

The speaker of the poem spends most of their time trying to decide which path to take. They describe each path in detail: the first one curves into the undergrowth, while the second was more tempting because it was “grassy” and a little less worn.

But the truth is that these paths have more in common than not. They’re both in the woods, for one. But the speaker also says the first is “just as fair” as the other, meaning it’s just as pretty or attractive. They also mention that “And both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black,” which is a poetic way of saying that neither path had been walked on in a while. And even the one the poet says is less traveled was actually “worn...about the same” as the first path!

So it’s t he speaker’s perspective that makes these paths seem divergent rather than them actually being super different from one another!

Because our perspectives shape the way we understand the world, it also affects our memories. Our memories help us understand who we are, and they shape the person we become. But as we tell ourselves our own story, we overwrite our memories . It’s kind of like deleting a sentence and retyping it...only for it to change a little bit each time!

What is your earliest memory? What is your favorite memory? Now think about this: are you remembering them, or are you remembering remembering them? Is there a difference? Yes, because science shows that every single time we recall a memory we change it . It’s very possible that your favorite early memory isn’t your memory at all--it is more likely a memory of being told something that happened to you. Perhaps you have a photograph of a moment that triggers your memory. The photograph may not change, but you do and your memory of the things that happened in that moment do.

So, if our experiences and our choices make us who we are, but we’re constantly misremembering and changing our memories, how do actual events even matter?

“The Road Not Taken” says that they do. Our choices we make are impactful, but the way we remember them is what helps shape us as individuals. So “The Road Not Taken” isn’t necessarily an ode to bravely taking the less popular path when others wouldn’t. It’s more like an ode to being resigned to believing our choices made us who we are, even though if we hadn’t made them, hadn’t taken that path, we’d be someone else who made choices that were just as valid.

Poetic devices are the tools we can use to unpack the meaning of a poem. Here are two that are important to understanding "The Road Not Taken."

The Top 2 Poetic Devices in “The Road Not Taken”

Poetic devices are literary devices that poets use to enhance and create a poem’s structure, tone, rhythm, and meaning. In Robert Frost’s, “The Road Not Taken,” Frost uses iambic meter and voice to reinforce the poem’s meaning .

Poetic Device 1: Iambic Meter

First thing’s first: the following is only a short overview of iambic meter. If you want an in-depth discussion of meter, check out our blog about it .

So what is meter? The English language has about an equal number of stressed and unstressed syllables. Arranging these stressed syllables into consistent is one of the most common ways of giving a poem a structure... and this arrangement is called “meter.”

A poem’s meter is made up of units. Each “unit” of stressed and unstressed syllables that repeats in a poem is called a foot. A foot can either be an iamb (one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable), a trochee (one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable), a dactyl (one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables) or an anapest (two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable).

The iamb is the foot that comes to us most naturally as native English speakers, and the most iambs we can speak easily without having to inhale for another breath is about five. So the most common structure for English language poetry is iambic pentameter , meaning the most common foot is an iamb, and there are five iambs per line. Historically, the vast majority of poetry written in English has been in iambic pentameter, and it was the default format for English poetry for centuries.

But pentameter isn’t the only iambic meter : two feet make dimeter, three feet make trimeter, four feet make tetrameter, and six feet make hexameter, and so forth.

The Modernist poets started moving away from these traditional repeating patterns of meter just after World War I, using invented patterns called “free verse.” Although Modernist free verse didn’t replace metrical verse overnight or completely, it slowly broke down the central importance of it in ways that are still felt today. Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” is from the very tail end of the iambic-meter-as-a-necessity era. Frost stubbornly and famously stuck to the traditional metrical forms , comparing free verse to playing tennis “with the net down.”

It is the iambic meter that gives the poem its “old-fashioned” rhythm and comfortable feeling. It’s also the thing that makes the poem sound so natural when you read it out loud. You may not even immediately recognize that the poem is in iambic meter, but it becomes clear when you start breaking down the lines. Take this one, for example:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

Looking at the stressed and unstressed syllables we get:

two ROADS/di-VERGED/in a YELL/ow WOOD

The capitalized syllables are stressed, and the lowercase ones aren’t. Each pair of these is an iamb!

There are four stressed syllables on this line , as well as every other line in the poem. That means this poem is in iambic tetrameter. The most common foot is an iamb (although notice that the third foot is an anapest), and there are four of them.

So why is this important? First, iambic tetrameter is a metrical pattern favored by the 19th century Romantics , who very frequently wrote poems that involved lonely people having great epiphanies while out in nature by themselves. By mimicking that style, Frost pulls on a long poetic tradition helps readers hone in on some of the major themes of his poem--specifically, that the speaker’s decision in the woods will have long-term consequences for both their character and their life.

The iambic form also rolls off of the tongue easily because it’s the most common meter in the English language. That also echoes the importance of nature in “The Road Not Taken”: both in terms of the natural imagery in the poem, but also in its discussion of the nature of perspective and memory. In that way, the form of the poem helps to reinforce its themes!

Poetic Device 2: Voice

The second poetic device that Frost employs is voice. The voice of a poem is the product of all the stylistic and vocabulary choices that add up to create a character . In this case, the poem has one character: the speaker. The speaker is unnamed, and it’s through their perspective that we experience the poem. It’s easy to think of the speaker as being Frost himself, but try to resist that temptation. The voice of a poem is an artificial construct, a character created to give the poem a certain effect.\

So how does Frost create this voice? First, note that the poem is in first person . That means we’re getting the speaker’s perspective in their own words, signaled by their use of first person pronouns like “I.” Additionally, the audience isn’t being addressed directly (like in Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise). Instead, it’s as if we’ve intruded upon the speaker’s thoughts as they ruminate over the potential ramifications of choosing one path over another.

Writing the poem in first person means that we’re getting the story straight from the horse’s mouth. In some ways, this is a good thing: it helps us understand the speaker’s unique perspective and in their own unique voice. But in other ways, it makes the objective details of the moment less clear. That’s because t he speaker’s recounting of the moment in the woods is colored by his own memory. That means we have to rely on the speaker’s interpretation of events...and decide how that impacts our interpretation of the poem! The first person narration also gives the poem much of its reflective nature.

What’s Next?

Analyzing poetry can be tricky, so it’s helpful to read a few expert analyses. We have a bunch on our blog that you can read through, like this one about Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night” or this article that explains 10 different sonnets!

It’s much easier to analyze poetry when you have the right tools to do it! Don’t miss our in-depth guides to poetic devices like assonance , iambic pentameter , and allusion .

If you’re more about writing poetry than analyzing it, we’ve got you covered! Here are five great tips for writing poetry (and a few scholarships for budding poets , too).

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

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Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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Decisions and Reflections in Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken'

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Introduction

Symbols and allegories.

Tenses and Reflections

Regrets and non-conformity, extended analysis, reflections on the human experience.

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Decisions and Reflections in Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken' essay

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The Road Not Taken Summary & Analysis by Robert Frost

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
Poetic Devices
Vocabulary & References
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
Line-by-Line Explanations

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”

LitCharts

The Full Text of “The Road Not Taken”

1 Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

2 And sorry I could not travel both

3 And be one traveler, long I stood

4 And looked down one as far as I could

5 To where it bent in the undergrowth;

6 Then took the other, as just as fair,

7 And having perhaps the better claim,

8 Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

9 Though as for that the passing there

10 Had worn them really about the same,

11 And both that morning equally lay

12 In leaves no step had trodden black.

13 Oh, I kept the first for another day!

14 Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

15 I doubted if I should ever come back.

16 I shall be telling this with a sigh

17 Somewhere ages and ages hence:

18 Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

19 I took the one less traveled by,

20 And that has made all the difference.

“The Road Not Taken” Summary

“the road not taken” themes.

Choices and Uncertainty

See where this theme is active in the poem.

Individualism and Nonconformity

Making Meaning

Line-by-line explanation & analysis of “the road not taken”.

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.

Lines 13-15

Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

Lines 16-17

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Lines 18-20

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

“The Road Not Taken” Symbols

Diverging Roads

See where this symbol appears in the poem.

The Road Less Traveled

“the road not taken” poetic devices & figurative language, extended metaphor.

See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

“The Road Not Taken” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

Yellow wood
Undergrowth
See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Road Not Taken”

Rhyme scheme, “the road not taken” speaker, “the road not taken” setting, literary and historical context of “the road not taken”, more “the road not taken” resources, external resources.

"The Most Misread Poem in America" — An insightful article in the Paris Review, which goes into depth about some of the different ways of reading (or misreading) "The Road Not Taken."

Robert Frost reads "The Road Not Taken" — Listen to Robert Frost read the poem.

Book Review: "The Road Not Taken," by David Orr — Those looking for an even more in-depth treatment of the poem might be interested in David Orr's book, "The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong."

LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Frost

Acquainted with the Night

After Apple-Picking

A Roadside Stand

Desert Places

Dust of Snow

Fire and Ice

Home Burial

Mending Wall

My November Guest

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

The Death of the Hired Man

The Oven Bird

The Sound of the Trees

The Tuft of Flowers

The Wood-Pile

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

The Road Not Taken

Background of the poem, frost’s inspiration for “the road not taken”, historical context.

There were different historically significant events going on in 1916. Therefore, it is not possible to identify one specific meaning as the one that the poet had in mind. When this poem was written, things of great importance were occurring in the poet’s life and social order. Firstly, in 1916, an act of Congress made “The National Park Services” to keep millions of acres of the forest land safe for the enjoyment of future generations.

Industrial Revolution and World War I

Urbanization.

The relation between people and society is the central core of “The Road Not Taken.” The poet asks the question of whether one must follow the footsteps of the majority or the least traveled path. In 1916, this question was part of the debate. Industrialization was the dominant social force in the last half of the nineteenth-century.

The Road Not Taken Summary

The speaker recalls that both roads were covered with leaves in the morning. These leaves had not been yet turned black by foot walks. He exclaims that he is saving the first road and will travel it some other day. Immediately, the speaker contradicts his statement with the recognition that in one’s life, one road leads to another road. Therefore, it is unlikely to say that he will ever get a chance to come back to the first road.

Themes in the Poem

Choices and uncertainty.

In “The Road Not Taken,” the speaker describes himself as a confused person who is facing a situation to choose between two roads. The speaker’s choice acts as an extended metaphor for all the choices that every individual must make in life. Through the speaker’s experience, the poem describes the nature of choices and the situation when a person is forced to choose.

I ndividualism and nonconformity

While deciding which road to take, the speaker notes that the second is “just as fair” as the first. However, the less worn-out state of the road makes the speaker choose it. Notably, the absence of signs of travel on the chosen path is taken positively rather than negatively. Rather than saying that the road looked as if it had not traveled much, the speaker states that it was “grassy”. Being grassy shows it is the result of a very few people walking on it. The speaker also says that the second road “wanted wear.”

Making meaning

Self-belief, the road not taken literary analysis, lines 11-15, lines 16-20, mood and tone, narrative poem, point of view, style, structure, and rhyme, literary devices in the poem, alliteration, connotation, personification, more from robert frost.

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Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, but his family moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1884 following his father’s death. The move was actually a return, for Frost’s ancestors were originally New Englanders, and Frost became famous for his poetry’s engagement with New England locales,...

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Penguin Press, 2015

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Christopher spaide, more online by christopher spaide.

“Nihilism, Shmihilism”
The Trembling Answers

The Road Not Taken

By david orr, reviewed by christopher spaide.

For a half century, Robert Frost has been the most unavoidable of American poets: the nation’s inaugural inaugural poet, laureate of swinging birches and snowy evenings, a fixture as essential to the middle-school classroom as the chalkboard. He has also been our most defended poet: Frost’s respectable partisans, among them Lionel Trilling, Randall Jarrell, Joseph Brodsky, and Paul Muldoon, have insisted that we look more closely at the true Frost, a poet less lovely, more dark and deep, than the Frost we were taught to love. “The Other Frost” (to quote the title of a Jarrell essay) is not a populist, apparently patriotic bard, but a modernist whom you might call (depending on whose Frost you’re meeting) coy, playful, mischievous, malevolent, an unsparing skeptic (if not an atheist), or an unappeasable pessimist (if not a downright nihilist). These corrective lenses have scandalized casual readers, but they utterly delighted Frost: when, at Frost’s eighty-fifth birthday dinner, Trilling shocked guests by toasting Frost as “a terrifying poet,” Frost responded with a thank-you note: “You made my birthday party a surprise party.”

The latest defense of Frost—the longest, most publicized, and most extravagantly subtitled to date—is David Orr’s The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong . Orr is a pithy, pushy poetry columnist for the New York Times Book Review , and the author of one previous book, Beautiful & Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry (2011). On face, The Road Not Taken looks like that earlier book, which performed a particular service for a particular audience: if you’ve always wanted to vacation to that foreign destination called Poetry, but simply don’t have the time, Orr’s travel guide will save you the trouble by condensing all that beautiful, pointless sightseeing into 200 pages. (This is Orr’s metaphor: in its introduction, Beautiful & Pointless analogizes modern poetry with Belgium, a beautiful and pointless country.)

But Orr’s new book is far subtler, stranger, and more subversive than his last, a how-to that admits defeat page after page, a manual for the uninitiated which never dumbs down or tidies up its unsettling suggestions. Orr has written the rare book on poetry that does not discriminate between audiences: newcomers and experts, Americans and Belgians, This Frost or the Other Frost, you or me or Orr. Why? We’re all wrong.

Orr’s Frost evolves into an unmanageable poet, but he starts off as something simple: the author of “The Road Not Taken,” a poem whose ubiquity goes without saying. Orr says it anyway, finding the poem’s deep cultural seepage in Ford commercials, rap lyrics, journalistic clichés, “one of the foundational texts of modern self-help” ( The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth ), and over four hundred books “on subjects ranging from political theory to the impending zombie apocalypse.” (Orr overlooks the prevalence of the phrase “the road less traveled” in America’s sex columns ; his arguments suffer accordingly.) Whether or not you’ve actively tried to memorize this poem, you likely have its best-known phrases stored in your vocabulary. Or you know its moves, its progression of steps forth and looks back, the way you half remember a joke: a man walks into a yellow wood, two roads diverge, he chooses “the one less traveled by,” that makes all the difference, America-brand individualism wins again.

The punch line, Orr reveals, is that the road “less traveled by” apparently wasn’t: worn down by passersby “really about the same,” both roads “that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black.” Take these lines literally, and the speaker’s sonorous conclusion—“I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference”—sounds less like measured stock-taking than an after-the-fact justification. For champions of the Other Frost (and for Frost himself), “The Road Not Taken” is a dark joke at the expense of a self-deluding speaker—as Orr articulates the position: “The poem isn’t a salute to can-do individualism; it’s a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives.” But Orr is too hesitant, too baffled, to fix the poem with one definitive reading, whether as “a paean to triumphant self-assertion” or as that paean’s wicked parody. Oscillating between extremes, “The Road Not Taken” ceases to be about a particular choice and becomes “about the necessity of choosing that somehow, like its author, never makes a choice itself—that instead repeatedly returns us to the same enigmatic, leaf-shadowed crossroads.”

Orr is not the first reader to complicate Frost’s greatest hit: see books on and by Frost , reviews of those books , even Orange Is the New Black . Orr makes his most original points, and finds his winningly self-skeptical voice, in the book’s four central chapters. All four work as discrete lessons on how to break into almost any poem; all four fail, exasperatingly but instructively, at cracking “The Road Not Taken.” In “The Poet,” Orr introduces a man as indecipherable as his best-known poem, obscured by biased biographers, adulatory defenders, and his own designing performance as America’s sour, lovable, libertarian sage (a role the culture now fills with Ron Swanson). In “The Poem,” Orr relates how “The Road Not Taken” was misunderstood by its very first reader and dedicatee, the English critic-poet Edward Thomas, and finds openings for that misunderstanding throughout the poem, from its title (which road wasn’t taken, and by whom?) to its final word. In the trendily interdisciplinary “The Choice,” Orr turns the poem into a case study for contemporary sociology, philosophy, marketing, and even neuroscience (Frost’s two roads map comfortably onto the brain’s left and right hemispheres). And in “The Chooser,” Frost’s poem serves as confirmation for two mutually exclusive notions of American personhood, the self as moment-to-moment construction and the self as wholesale discovery.

By now, Orr has perfected strategies for exposing poetry to new audiences. His deftest is a bait and switch: he gives airtime to outsider assumptions (“Poets, we assume, are not popular—at least after 1910 or so”) and hard-to-gauge truisms (“Poetry has always oscillated between guardedness and fervor”) only to second-guess, backtrack, uncover exceptions. Orr’s off-topic jokiness, which spurs the taut comic routines of his journalism (and, unchecked in Beautiful & Pointless , produces a dinner full of dad jokes), is absent, replaced by a single-minded drive to let no easy reading stand. The result is not only a compilation of brilliant explanations for non-experts, on topics both poetic and not—Frost’s metrical theory of “the sound of sense,” or “the border of determinism and free will”—but also “a guide to modern poetry” far more welcoming, more wide-ranging, than Orr’s first book.

It’s also wrong—“wrong” in the way Orr’s subtitle informs us that “almost everyone” is wrong, subject to unacknowledged biases, overinflated claims, indigestible self-contradiction. As the book progresses, “The Road Not Taken” builds up into everything and nothing: on one page, it “captures the difficult essence of American experience”; on the next, it’s a funhouse of deception and distortion. Frost comes across as the century’s most prescient thinker, encoding contemporary philosophy and psychology into gnomic lines, but also as a modernist supervillain, bent on deceiving all audiences, himself included. That Orr never even tries to resolve these contradictions is not a demerit but this book’s great unspoken lesson. The further you get into “The Road Not Taken,” or any inexhaustible poem, the notion of any one unequivocally “right” reading seems more and more like an illusion. Depending on how you view it, Orr’s shrewd guide will teach you how to read Frost in many “right” ways, or how to read him spectacularly wrong. Thankfully, it doesn’t make a difference.

Published on April 29, 2016

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Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” Poem Explication Essay

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In his ambiguous poem “The Road Not Taken”, Robert Frost speaks about life choices and how critical decisions shape one’s life in the long run, or, perhaps, forever. The poem has a rigid rhyme scheme of ABAAB with four stanzas each with five lines. The title captures the attention of the reader by arousing curiosity to find out about this road that is not taken, and ultimately, the poem addresses this issue by talking about the road and its implications in life. The speaker arrives at a junction on a road and he has to decide which route to take. However, the narrator does not know what lies ahead, thus any choice can be good or bad. The poet takes the reader through a journey of emotional turmoil trying to make the right decision because the path chosen defines the future and life’s destination. As such, if the wrong choice is made, the decision-maker has to live with the consequences therein. This understanding calls for careful consideration when making important decisions in life because once a choice has been made, there is no going back. Frost uses symbolism and metaphor to warn people about the importance of making the right choices in life.

The opening stanza introduces the reader to the inevitability of change and decision-making in life. The speaker in the poem is traveling down a road and comes to a junction with two roads diverging “in a yellow wood” (Line 1) and he stands there contemplating which road to take. The first line ends with a metaphor – “a yellow wood”, which hints that the setting of the poem is in the forest, most probably during the fall, a season of change or transition – the inevitability of life. The two diverging roads symbolize choices in life and Frost quickly adds that unfortunately, he “could not travel both” (Line 2), which is an expression of curiosity about life choices and, at the same time, regret that the speaker is limited in his decisions and the inability to know what lies ahead. Therefore, he stands at the junction and looks “down one as far as I could” (Line 3), which symbolizes the difficulty of preferring one decision over the other. This line also carries some level of procrastination because the speaker wants to see what lies ahead of each path before making a choice. Unfortunately, the roads “bent in the underground” (Line 4), an indication that there are no guarantees in life. The last line is a metaphor for human beings’ inability to foretell the future with certainty; hence, no matter which road is taken, there will be challenges.

The second stanza ushers the reader into the realm of decision-making in life. The narrator takes the other road, but it is “just as fair” (Line 6). This assertion underscores the need to consider one’s choices and realize that once a decision is made, there is no turning back. In Line 7, the speaker uses the word “perhaps” as a continuation of the theme of the uncertainty of life. The reader makes an informed guess that the speaker has taken the road less traveled because it is “grassy and wanted wear” (Line 8). This path symbolizes the hard decisions that people have to make in life. However, the metaphor of a less traveled road indicates that most people are unwilling to break away from the norms and the status quo. Nevertheless, the speaker is yet to decide because both roads are “worn…about the same” (Line 10). Procrastination is a common human character trait and the speaker in this poem is not spared from it, hence the indecision at the end of the second stanza.

In the opening of stanza three, the speaker recalls that both roads equally lay untraveled, and thus he took one path and saved the “first for another day” (Line 12). The narrator hopes to come back in the future and travel the other road perhaps to explore what lies ahead. However, he immediately realizes the futility of his thinking and regrets, “Yet knowing how way leads on to way/ I doubted if I should ever come back” (Lines 14-15). This realization symbolizes real-life occurrences. When a person makes a decision and settles on a certain path in life, it leads to another decision and on to another path, thus there is no coming back. The stanza also has subtle regret of the inability to travel both roads at the same time. In other words, in life, people have to choose one option over the other and stick to their choices no matter how the future turns out. It is a call to be prepared to live with the consequences of one’s decisions and take responsibility because what has been done cannot be undone. Such is life, the speaker is well aware of it, and as he closes the third stanza, he casts doubt on the possibility of ever revisiting his choices.

The last stanza throws the reader into confusion with an open-to-interpretation statement. Frost says, “I shall be telling this with a sigh” (Line 16). The use of the word “sigh” at this point is equally confusing and thought-provoking. It could be chosen to show the speaker’s failure to make the right choices – regret, disappointment, frustration, or contentment. Nostalgically, he posits, “Somewhere ages and ages hence” (Line 17). The alliteration used in this line emphasizes the long-term effects of decisions that people make in life – perhaps they endure for a lifetime. The speaker finally confirms that he “took the one less traveled by” (Line 19) and it “made all the difference” (Line 20). The metaphor of the road less traveled is used to encourage people to make unpopular decisions if they are convinced that they are the right ones. Every invention or discovery in life has resulted from people making unconventional decisions and choosing to travel the less trodden road.

In the poem “The Road Not Taken”, Frost takes the reader on a journey to unravel the complexities of life and the uncertainties of the future. Nevertheless, people have to make decisions, which ultimately shape their lives irredeemably. In the end, Frost makes his choice and decides to take the road less traveled and he realizes that he made the right decision. The poem uses metaphors and symbolism to resent the inability of human beings to predict the future with certainty. As such, individuals have to make decisions and be prepared to live with consequences thereafter. However, the inability to foretell the future should not paralyze people to live indecisively. As Frost finally finds out, the road less traveled can change everything and without trivializing the difficulties and emotional anguish involved in making such decisions, he encourages readers to gather one’s courage and make the right life decisions based on convictions and careful consideration.

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Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”: Regret in the Human Psyche - A Critical Essay

Luke Judkins

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“The Road Not Taken”: A Reflective Poem by Robert Frost

“The Road Not Taken” is a mostly reflective poem written by Robert Frost. This poem is primarily about the choices one makes in life. Once someone makes a choice, it is usually for better or for worse, according to this poem. The poem utilizes symbolism as a reflective tool. For instance, the road is a symbol of the path of life. In this case, the speaker is reflective about which of the two roads to take (Dickinson et al. 1). If the speaker picks a road, all the privileges of other road are forfeited. The poet uses rhymes and rhythm to drive his point home.

The theme of this poem is universal. Almost everyone finds himself or herself in the speaker’s position at some point in life. People will often find themselves with two equally attractive and uncertain options. The choice one picks shapes one’s entire life. The speaker is wondering if, after all the time that has passed, there is a possibility of knowing what lay in the road not taken.

Every adult has to make life-changing decisions on a day-to-day basis. This fact makes the following poem to be relatable to its readers’ day-to-day lives. To understand this point better, one can refer to the second line in the poem where the speaker laments of how impossible it is to take both options.

What makes the poem such a good read, is its heavy use of rhythm and rhymes. After reading this poem a few times, one can be able to recite it effortlessly. Right from the start, the poet uses catchy rhymes. For example, the first line of the first stanza rhymes with the third line. On the other hand, the second line rhymes with the fifth. This pattern is maintained throughout the poem, and this arouses the reader’s curiosity whenever he/she is about to read the next line.

I can relate to the poem’s message because some years ago, I found myself in a dilemma. I was faced with the decision of either ending a relationship with my significant other or pursue a long distance relationship. Each of these decisions was viable.

As the speaker puts it, the ones passing there had worn the roads about the same. In my case, there are examples of those who chose to take part in long distance relationships. There are also those who chose not to pursue long distance relationships. Like the speaker, I still wonder where the other choice would have led. However, I am happy with the decision I finally made. Like the speaker, I am saying this with relief (Dickinson et al. 16).

Even an inconsequential choice can change someone’s life in a big way. This is the poem’s central theme and message. However, the poem addresses the impact of making either of the choices. The title of the poem is “The Road Not Taken.” Still, the poem explores the other option or the road that was taken.

Using rhymes and rhythm, the poet conveys his message skillfully. The basic argument is that even though one may be faced with difficult choices in life, one eventually has to pick a path and stick to it. The only thing one can do is to believe that the path he/she took was the right path.

Works Cited

Dickinson, Emily, et al. Four Major American Poets . Upper Saddle, NJ: Pearson Education, 2010. Print.

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Friday essay: exhilaration and fear – Dennis Altman on the global gay rights divide

Vice Chancellor's Fellow and Professorial Fellow, Institute for Human Security and Social Change, La Trobe University

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Earlier this year I visited Italy to mark the re-translation of my first book, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation (published in 1972). An attempt to explain the emergence of gay liberation, the book grew out of my involvement in New York’s early gay movement, which exploded after a police raid on a gay bar, the Stonewall, in 1969.

There was something moving and humbling about talking to audiences, many of whom were not born when I wrote that book, more so because I do not speak Italian and was largely dependent on interpreters. In all four cities where I spoke, audiences ranged widely across age and sexual and gender identities. Some were veterans of the early Italian gay movement, others just discovering a queer milieu.

Reflecting on the world in which I wrote my book, and the changes that have occurred since, I turned to the words of the late civil rights activist Martin Luther King . “The arc of the moral universe is long,” said King, “but it bends towards justice.”

Certainly, in countries like Australia, this statement feels persuasive. Who would have imagined back in 1972 that the most trusted politician in the country would be an openly lesbian Asian woman? Or that the prime minister would lead a Pride march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge? Of course there are still people on the margins who struggle for acceptance. While we now have large, well-funded queer community organisations, they often overlook the most marginalised, as is the case for queer refugees and asylum seekers .

But King’s words seemed less apposite in Italy, now the least progressive country in Western Europe, with a government committed to defending “family values”, as long as the family is understood in conventional heterosexual terms. Italy has civil unions rather than same-sex marriage, and while abortion is legal, the Meloni government is seeking to restrict access to it .

In Italy, I was struck by the vigour of the queer cultural and intellectual world, but also by how few resources are available for its queer community compared to Australia. Nowhere in the country is there anything equivalent to Melbourne’s grandiose Victorian Pride Centre or the government-supported QTopia museum in Sydney.

Meanwhile, in other European countries, such as Russia and Hungary, authoritarian leaders Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban are making attacks on “gender ideology” and decrying “LGBT ideology” . Russia’s supreme court banned the “LGBT movement” last November, and several courts have convicted people for displaying “extremist” rainbow symbols.

In African nations such as Uganda, and, closer to home, in Indonesia, new laws target queer sexuality. And earlier this year, Iraq passed a law imposing a sentence of 10 to 15 years for same-sex relations.

Australia’s arc

It is now more than half a century since people whose sexuality and gender identity falls outside the conventions of hegemonic masculinity (to use sociologist Raewyn Connell’s evocative phrase ) began organising politically in Australia.

While Sydney’s Mardi Gras is the best-known expression of queer politics, it was preceded by the foundation of the first major gay group, CAMP, in 1970, and an explosion of groups and demonstrations before the infamous march down Oxford Street in 1978 that became Mardi Gras.

By this time there were gay groups across the country. At this point we used the word gay to include women as much as men and were remarkably unaware of the significance of trans identities. A gay and lesbian press had begun to flourish. American influences were strong, whether through imported books and magazines or the big mural of San Francisco on the wall of one of Oxford’s Street’s discos. In today’s world of instant online hookups, I suspect there is more casual sex than ever, but we have lost the sense that it is striking a blow for liberation, part of the mythology we carved out for ourselves in the ‘70s.

For a few years then, there was a flurry of gay stories on television, most significantly the character played by the actor Joe Hasham in the series Number 96 . I had the great fortune to launch the Australian edition of my book on a 50-minute ABC interview show – Monday Conference (a precursor to Q&A). I faced the half-hearted homophobia of a Protestant minister and a future Liberal politician.

Within a few years, lesbians felt an increasing need to move away from gay men and establish their own networks and publications. The 1970s were in some ways the golden age of the gay and lesbian movement and what most struck me in Italy was the sense among younger activists of having missed out on those years.

There was a strong sense of energy and camaraderie in the '70s as we battled for acceptance, both legal and social. Decriminalisation of homosexuality came slowly in Australia – it began in South Australia in 1975, with Tasmania the last holdout , forced to remove its sodomy laws in 1994.

For homosexual men, at least, the golden age ended with reports at the beginning of the 1980s of a new and fatal disease, originally called Gay Related Immune Deficiency, soon replaced by the term AIDS. Over the following 15 years, until the invention of effective anti-retroviral drugs in 1996, a diagnosis of HIV was an almost certain predictor of the collapse of the immune system, leading to death. For a time, AIDS seemed to end the period of casual carefree sex.

Still, Australia was fortunate to have a progressive government that understood the need to involve the groups most at risk of the new disease in combating it. During the second half of the 1980s, Australia stood out for its success in curbing the spread of HIV, aided by both community organisations and a few determined Liberals who insisted the response should be bipartisan. AIDS laid the groundwork for the creation of a new group of professional queers, who operate today rather as other professional lobbyists and fundraisers do.

A quilt embroidered with the names of people who died of AIDS.

As the focus for gay men remained fixed on AIDS and decriminalisation, lesbians often found themselves caught between gay and women’s politics. Some moved to a position of lesbian separatism. Others sought to build broader alliances. Trans people were even less visible in the gay movement.

Judith Butler published Gender Trouble in 1990 . Although the book was far more widely attributed than actually read, it signalled new ways of understanding gender – as performative and more than a reflection of bodily attributes. These ideas continue to reverberate today.

At the same time, queer theory emerged in the United States, a move I initially criticised as the product of postmodern theory and frustration at the apparent conservative turn of the Reagan years. I was recently taken to task for my comments by my Italian translators and ironically I now far prefer the term “queer” to the clumsy alphabetical list that aims to incorporate all forms of sexual and gender diversity.

If we need a catch-all phrase, I would use that of the United Nations Human Rights Committee: “sexual orientation and gender identity” (SOGI).

By the beginning of this century, there was growing acceptance the old rules of hegemonic masculinity were no longer dominant in Australia. The Keating government had ended the ban on homosexuals serving in the military; anti-discrimination laws increasingly recognised SOGI, although with the still vexed question of exemptions based on religious doctrine; there was increasing legal recognition of trans people and the right to claim one’s preferred gender.

In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country to recognise same-sex marriage. Australia would lag behind 20 countries in accepting this. An expensive national postal vote returned a strong majority in favour of changing the marriage laws. I think the postal vote was a positive step: while it was hurtful for some queers, there was something extraordinarily positive in the widespread rallying of support, and the final vote surprised many people with a majority supporting change in parts of the country assumed to be the most homophobic, such as northwest Tasmania and coastal Queensland.

Two men in matching pink Hawaiin shirts.

Despite my own cynicism about marriage, the vote had become a much larger indicator of acceptance of sexual diversity, even if it meant presenting an overly respectable image of happy monogamous couples, just like the ones in 1950s TV land. The postal vote created a situation almost impossible to reverse, unlike the 2015 Supreme Court ruling in the US on same-sex marriage, which may well fall victim to a future Trump-dominated court.

The then Turnbull government promised to introduce legislation protecting religious freedom, which two successive governments have so far failed to deliver. The key stumbling block appears to be whether religious schools have the right to dismiss queer staff and students. Too often, freedom of religion is taken to mean freedom to discriminate, as long as it is done with reference to some form of sacred text.

Since 2016, over a dozen countries have recognised same-sex marriage, most recently Thailand, where the legislation is now awaiting royal assent. But while we were celebrating marriage, queers in most of the world were facing far greater issues.

The wider world

At the end of the 1980s, the federal government paid for several study tours for AIDS activists from southeast Asia, just as regional and international community HIV networks were emerging.

I have vivid memories of a meeting in a bitterly cold Paris where the International Council of AIDS Service Organisations was born; of the gay caucus at a regional HIV meeting in Delhi that met in a park because the organisers refused us space in the official venue; of sitting at an early AIDS Conference in Morocco where gay men said they switched from Arabic to French when they wanted to talk about sex.

In part because of the attention the AIDS epidemic brought to sexuality, SOGI issues started to be raised in official international forums.

Under pressure from a few Latin American and European countries, UN bodies started to tentatively recognise sexuality and gender identity as part of human rights. In 2016, the Human Rights Council agreed to appoint an independent expert to report on violence and discrimination against people based on their sexuality or gender identity. The position has been reaffirmed twice since then, each time by a fairly narrow vote of the council.

In many countries, these moves led to progressive shifts in policy. Most significant, perhaps, was the decision of the Indian Supreme Court to overrule existing sodomy laws in 2018, followed by Singapore and several Caribbean counties in 2022. In other states, a combination of religious and political authoritarianism led to increasing repression and denunciation of anyone who seemed to flout “traditional values”.

One of the sad ironies of this debate is how many countries freed from colonial rule have not merely kept old colonial laws regulating sexuality, but have gone beyond them in creating new penalties.

Across what was British Africa there have been viciously homophobic laws enacted, leading to persecution, arrests and even murder. The best known examples come from Uganda , where a harsh anti-gay law passed last year threatens punishment of death for some perceived offences, and calls for life in prison for anyone engaging in same-sex relations.

Similarly draconian laws are being proposed in Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana. There are some notable exceptions, most recently in Namibia, where the High Court overruled the colonial anti-sodomy laws .

Eight years ago in our book Queer Wars, my colleague Jon Symons and I posited a growing polarisation around SOGI rights, running counter to optimistic assumptions that human rights might ultimately be globalised. Governments and religious leaders, we suggested, have used resistance to these rights to cast themselves as defenders of traditional values against neo-colonial interference and western decadence.

Sadly what we wrote then is even more striking today, with politicians such as Putin, Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni and former Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro making attacks on “gender ideology” – often shorthand for trans and homophobia – central to their rhetoric. Putin has even justified the war on Ukraine as stemming from western-imposed concepts of LGBT rights .

In our region, Indonesia has a very deep tradition of understanding sexual and gender diversity. But it has seen similar attacks in recent years .

In December 2022, the Indonesian parliament passed a new criminal code making consensual sex outside of marriage a criminal offence. Human Rights Watch claims this code violates the rights of women, religious minorities and SOGI people . Same-sex couples cannot marry in Indonesia, so this clause also effectively renders all same-sex conduct illegal.

The most comprehensive survey of current legal and state-sanctioned discrimination against SOGI persons is found in the annual reports of The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association. As if echoing Martin Luther King’s words, its 2024 report warns : “The Road to Equality is not Straight”.

The report found homophobia was on the rise in parts of Africa and the Middle East, and warned even when criminal sanctions are removed, there remain many areas where discrimination exists on the basis of sexuality or gender identity.

In Australia, our obsession with the US means we are often unaware of developments closer to home. But American cultural influence is ubiquitous, and a Trump victory later this year would undoubtedly energise the push against “gender ideology” here, as elsewhere. (If re-elected, Trump has vowed to tackle “left-wing gender insanity” and pass a law recognising just two genders.)

It might seem strange that even today, coming out as other than sexually or gender conforming can be as daunting as it was when we were widely seen as criminal, sick and sinful. But we know this is the experience of many young people despite the massive changes we have experienced in Australia.

Visiting Italy reminded me these changes cannot be taken for granted: sometimes the arc of progress seems more like a boomerang.

A melancholia

Italy now lags behind once deeply conservative Catholic countries such as Ireland and Spain, which have shaken off the clergy’s grip and recognise same-sex marriage. In Italy, the Pope still holds court in Rome, while the once powerful Communist Party has virtually disappeared and the left is weak.

In the various spaces where I spoke – the Antigone bookshop in Milan, the community centre set in the old walls of Bologna, the Liguria Pride centre in Genoa – I sensed the same exhilaration and fear that marked the early days of gay liberation. Republishing a book written over half a century ago had seemed to me an exercise in nostalgia, rather like the constant reliving of the first Mardi Gras for its participants in Sydney.

“No,” observed my very smart friend and patron, Lorenzo Bernini, one of Italy’s leading queer scholars. “It is melancholy. We look back to a revolutionary era we were too young to be part of.”

The melancholia is not simply about acceptance. It is rather a longing for a time when radical change towards a more equitable and just society seemed possible.

Gay Liberation saw itself as part of a broader movement re-imagining society. That vision has been lost in the flurry of commercial sponsorships and political blessings now dominating events like Mardi Gras and Melbourne’s Midsumma festival.

In today’s world, where populist authoritarianism is on the rise, revolutionary change no longer seems possible. We have developed a successful mainstream queer movement, but at the cost of the larger ambitions of our radical foundation.

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Middle East Crisis At Least 25 Reported Killed in Israeli Airstrike in Southern Gaza

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An Israeli soldier firing a mortar from near the Gaza border. Amir Cohen/Reuters
A Palestinian inspecting a destroyed building in Nuseirat, in central Gaza. Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock
Collecting water from a UNICEF truck in Deir al Balah. Eyad Baba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Smoke rising during an Israeli military operation in Nur Shams, in the West Bank. Alaa Badarneh/EPA, via Shutterstock
A Palestinian mourning his son in Deir al Balah. Ramadan Abed/Reuters
Rockets fired from southern Lebanon being intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome air defense system in northern Israel on Monday. Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Damaged buildings in Gaza City on Monday. Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Israeli military said it was ‘looking into reports that civilians were harmed.’

An Israeli airstrike near a school building being used as a shelter by displaced Palestinians killed at least 25 people and injured more than 50 on Tuesday outside of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, the Gaza Ministry of Health said. Many of the injured were in critical condition, and the death toll was expected to rise, it added.

The strike hit the entrance of Al Awda School in the town of Abassan, on the eastern outskirts of Khan Younis, according to the health ministry. The Israeli military said that the strike was targeting a Hamas member who took part in the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, and that it was “looking into reports that civilians were harmed.”

The strike was condemned by Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s top diplomat, who asked in a post on social media , “For how long are innocent civilians going to bear the brunt of this conflict? We condemn any violation of international law: those responsible must be held accountable.”

Tuesday’s strike was at least the fourth in four days in which the Israeli military bombed school buildings or struck in their immediate vicinity. In each instance, the military said the buildings were being used by Hamas or other militant groups.

At least 16 people were killed on Saturday in an Israeli strike at a school operated by UNRWA, the main United Nations agency that assists Palestinian refugees, in Nuseirat, in central Gaza, according to the health ministry. The following morning, Israeli forces bombarded a Catholic school in Gaza City where hundreds of civilians were sheltering, according to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which runs the facility. And on Monday, the Israeli military said it had carried out a strike on militants who had been “using the structures of a school in the area of Nuseirat as cover.”

According to the United Nations, more than 80 percent of Gaza’s schools have been severely damaged or destroyed by fighting, including all of the enclave’s 12 universities. Many of them had been converted into makeshift shelters for people displaced during the war.

Last month, a n Israeli airstrike in central Gaza killed dozens of people at a U.N. school complex that thousands of displaced Palestinians were using as a shelter. Palestinian officials said the strike killed civilians, including many women and children.

Israel also struck schools that were being used as shelters in May, killing more than a dozen people , and last November, killing at least 24 . In each case, Israel said it had been targeting Hamas fighters.

Images of the strike on Tuesday were posted online by Palestine TV, a network affiliated with the Palestinian Authority, a rival to Hamas based in the West Bank, and by Agence France-Presse, an international news agency.

The photos published by Agence France-Presse and Reuters showed the bodies of gravely injured Palestinians sprawled on the floor of a hospital emergency room and piled onto the back of a pickup truck and a dirty cart pulled by a motorcycle.

In others, a woman and a child can be seen grieving next to body bags lying on the blood-streaked hospital floor. In another, a man cradles the bloody body of a child.

Palestine TV showed footage of panicked men and women ferrying the injured to an emergency room. Some rushed there in a battered ambulance, others in a sedan packed with children, its windows shattered and cracked. In one video, a man runs through the crowd to the hospital entrance shouting for mercy from God. In his arms is the body of a child, limp and flailing. The New York Times could not independently verify the videos.

In a statement, Hamas condemned the strike as “a continuation of the genocidal war and massacres by the Zionist terrorist government against our people.”

The group, which led the Oct. 7 attacks, in which hundreds of civilians in Israel were killed and abducted, said the strike on Tuesday showed Israel’s disregard for “the laws and treaties designed to protect civilians in war.”

Ephrat Livni contributed reporting.

— Liam Stack and Anushka Patil

key developments

A delegation of senior Israelis was expected in Qatar for cease-fire talks, and other news.

A delegation of senior Israeli officials — led by David Barnea, the head of the Mossad intelligence agency — was expected in Qatar on Wednesday for further negotiations on a cease-fire and hostage release deal, according to an Israeli official and another official familiar with the matter. Mr. Barnea was to be joined by Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service, the Israeli official said. The Israeli security chiefs were also expected to meet with William Burns, the C.I.A. director, and with the Qatari prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani, the officials said.

Mr. Burns met with Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, on Tuesday to discuss the negotiations. Mediators have been scrambling to keep the talks alive as hopes for a cease-fire have diminished, with Israel and Hamas both indicating that they are still far apart. A White House spokesman, John F. Kirby, said on Monday: “We’re trying to close those gaps as best we can.” He played down Israel’s and Hamas’s public comments, saying they “aren’t necessarily reflective of the conversations we’re having privately with them or their interlocutors.”

Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, approved a plan on Tuesday to start drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men into the military over the next month after a Supreme Court ruling on June 25 found that there was no legal basis to give them an exemption. The Defense Ministry said that Mr. Gallant had approved orders for the screening and evaluation of ultra-Orthodox conscripts. The Supreme Court decision pit secular Israelis against the ultra-Orthodox, who say their religious study is as essential and protective as military service, and exposed cracks in the coalition government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which relies on two ultra-Orthodox parties.

Gaza City quieted down months ago, but its residents are now under fire again.

When the Israeli military started scaling back its campaign in Gaza City early this year, the city’s residents thought the worst was over, and some soon moved back to its shattered blocks from other parts of Gaza.

Now, a new Israeli ground offensive is expanding into large areas of the city and people are fleeing once again, with even fewer options for refuge than before.

The Israeli military reported Tuesday that it was pressing on for a second day into neighborhoods in the center and west of the city, targeting areas where it says Hamas militants have re-established themselves in the months since it turned its focus to other parts of Gaza.

The pattern has repeated itself across the territory, as critics say Israel has done little to fill the power vacuum left behind when its troops move on. The latest raid was coupled with evacuation orders for several neighborhoods in the city and areas west of it, and crowds of people were scrambling to get out.

Zainab al-Khaldi, a lawyer and researcher with UNICEF who was working at a school-turned-shelter in Al-Daraj, one of the areas that the Israeli military moved into on Monday, described a frantic effort to figure out which way to go after the shelter where she was staying came under artillery fire with no warning on Monday evening.

“People went crazy and started running in all directions,” she said in a phone interview. Ms. al-Khaldi said she saw more than 20 people who were wounded by the shelling, “and no one could reach them to help.”

The military was already conducting a separate operation in the city, in the Shajaiye neighborhood in the east, which entered its 12th day on Tuesday. The Israeli military said it was “engaged in close-quarters combat” above and below ground with Palestinian militants. It said it had killed more than 150 militants in Shajaiye and “located tunnel shafts and significant tunnel routes.” The United Nations office of humanitarian affairs said 60,000 to 80,000 people were displaced on the first night of that raid.

About 20 minutes after the shelter in Al-Daraj was hit, Ms. al-Khaldi said she and others there started getting text messages and automated phone calls from the Israeli military instructing them to evacuate to the west. People started to do so, but many felt trapped as fighting raged in several areas nearby.

“If we wanted to go east to Shajaiye, there’s bombing,” she said. “If we wanted to go toward Al-Ahli Hospital there’s bombing,” describing a facility where people have been sheltering in central Gaza City.

“There was danger in all places,” she said.

Ms. al-Khaldi and a crowd of others headed west “under an insane amount of fire from quadcopters,” she said, before she was able to find shelter in the home of some she knows.

“This was not our first displacement and it will not be our last,” she said.

Humanitarian groups have condemned the new Israeli incursions and evacuation orders. The U.N. Human Rights Office said in a statement on Monday that it was “appalled” by the orders issued to Gaza City residents, “many of whom have been forcibly displaced multiple times.” It said the orders were confusing and often told people to move to combat areas.

The main U.N. agency that assists Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said in a post on X that the displacements meant that “people have to move back to destroyed areas despite the threat of unexploded ordnance.”

Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, reported that dozens of Palestinians were killed and wounded in the neighborhoods of Al-Daraj, Al-Tuffah and the Old City amid intense Israeli bombardment. The agency added that Israeli attacks had also targeted Deir al Balah, an area in central Gaza where many of those fleeing had headed.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said in a statement that all of its smaller clinics and emergency rooms in Gaza City were “out of service” because they were located in the evacuation zones.

Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.

— Hiba Yazbek and Iyad Abuheweila reporting from Jerusalem and Istanbul

Hezbollah launches retaliatory rockets after Israel appears to strike in Syria.

An apparent Israeli drone strike in Syria on Tuesday prompted the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to respond with rocket fire into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the group said, an attack that killed two people as fears continued to mount over the threat of a full-scale war.

Hezbollah said in a statement that it had targeted an Israeli military base as a direct response to what it called an “assassination” in Syria earlier in the day. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported on Tuesday that two Hezbollah members had been killed in an Israeli drone strike on their vehicle close to the Lebanese border. The driver of the vehicle, a Syrian national, was also injured in the strike, the war monitor said.

Neither Hezbollah nor the Israeli military said whether anyone had been killed in the strike, and Israel had not claimed responsibility by Tuesday night. But the Israeli military has ramped up airstrikes in Syria since the war began in Gaza last year — often targeting Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups who have entrenched themselves across the country.

The Israeli police said that a man and woman were killed in the Hezbollah rocket barrage that followed and that fire crews were working to extinguish several blazes that broke out in the area. It was not immediately clear if the victims were civilians or active-duty soldiers.

The Israeli military said a total of 40 projectiles had been launched across the Lebanese border into the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau bordering Syria that Israel annexed nearly 60 years ago.

The latest tit-for-tat strikes between Hezbollah and Israel came amid intensifying efforts by the Biden administration to contain the conflict and prevent an all-out war. Still, numerous rounds of shuttle diplomacy have failed to quell rising tensions, with Hezbollah stressing repeatedly that violence will continue along Israel’s northern border as long as the war in Gaza persists.

Hezbollah began firing into northern Israel in solidarity with the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 that precipitated the war in Gaza. More than 150,000 Israelis and Lebanese have so far been forced to flee their homes along the border, with no indication of when they may be able to return.

— Euan Ward

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The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost (Poem + Analysis)
Summary. 'The Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost ( Bio | Poems) describes how the speaker struggles to choose between two roads diverging in the yellowish woods on an autumn morning. In the poem, the individual arrives at a critical juncture in his life, arriving at crossroads at last near "a yellow wood.".
Analysis of "The Road Not Taken": [Essay Example], 621 words
Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" is one of the most well-known and widely studied poems in American literature. Written in 1916, the poem explores the theme of decision-making and the consequences of the choices we make in life. Through a careful analysis of the poem's language, structure, and themes, we can gain a deeper understanding ...
The Road Not Taken
In "The Road Not Taken", the poet uses a reflective tone to address the significance of the choices one makes in life. In this poem, Symbolism is the tool used to bring about this reflection. The "road" referred to by the speaker is the most prominent symbol in the poem. In this case, the road refers to a path in life.
The Main Message in Robert Frost's The Road not Taken
'The Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost is a poem about the difficult and stressful choices in life. The poem was written in 1915 during World War One. The... read full [Essay Sample] for free ... The Road Not Taken is a reflection of how you shouldn't regret the difficult decisions you will make in life, and how you should be happy about your ...
Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken: Meaning and Analysis
Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken" Poem. "The Road Not Taken" is a narrative poem, meaning it is a poem that tells a story. It was written in 1915 as a joke for Frost's friend, Edward Thomas. Frost and Thomas were fond of hiking together, and Thomas often had trouble making up his mind which trail they should follow.
Decisions and Reflections in Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken'
In conclusion, "The Road Not Taken" stands as a multifaceted exploration of decision-making, regrets, and individualism. Frost's adept use of symbolism, verb tenses, and nuanced reflections elevates the poem to a timeless masterpiece. The extended analysis reveals the universality of the poem, touching on the human experience in profound ways.
"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
The poem "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost expresses the uncertainty and finality of choice. The poem is rich with symbolism, which is open for interpretation of the reader. The aim of this essay is to evaluate this poem through poetic analysis, and reveal its message. Get a custom essay on "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. 2.
The Road Not Taken Poem Summary and Analysis
Powered by LitCharts content and AI. 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 ...
The Road Not Taken Summary and Literary Analysis
The Road Not Taken Literary Analysis. "The Road Not Taken" is a poem about the struggles of the speaker to decide which one of the two roads he must choose. It has both literal and metaphorical meanings. The two roads symbolize two directions in life to follow.
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
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.
The Road Not Taken
For champions of the Other Frost (and for Frost himself), "The Road Not Taken" is a dark joke at the expense of a self-deluding speaker—as Orr articulates the position: "The poem isn't a salute to can-do individualism; it's a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives.".
Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" Poem Explication Essay
Exclusively available on IvyPanda®. In his ambiguous poem "The Road Not Taken", Robert Frost speaks about life choices and how critical decisions shape one's life in the long run, or, perhaps, forever. The poem has a rigid rhyme scheme of ABAAB with four stanzas each with five lines. The title captures the attention of the reader by ...
Reflection Of The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost
Reflection Of The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost. "The Road Not Taken", written by Robert Frost in 1916, is a poem set in the vast confines of nature like many of other Frost's works. He wrote about coming to a crossroads decision and picking the one less traveled. One theme of the poem is that it is important to take your own path in life.
Reflection on The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost
Reflection on The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost. Perhaps one of the most well-known poems in modern America is a work by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken. This poem consists of four stanzas that depict the story of the narrator traveling through the woods early in the morning and coming upon a fork in the path, where he milled about for a ...
The Road Not Taken' Reflection Essay
The Road Not Taken by Frost, this title implies the loss risk of human life. The Road that the speaker didn't take, is quite something within the textual content of the literary composition, this title hints that the literary composition is regarding lost chance, complexities of decisions, no longer in reality deciding on the path it is modern-day and new.
The Road Not Taken
Share Cite. Here's one possible thesis statement: Frost shows, in his poem "The Road Not Taken," that there is no road less traveled, that it is ultimately impossible to make a totally unique ...
Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken": Regret in the Human Psyche
This critical essay argues that Robert Frost's poem, "The Road Not Taken" is not a poem about taking a road less traveled but about regret and the state of the human psyche during the process of decision. Frost argues against indecisiveness and regret via the speaker's battle to decidebetween two virtually identical roads—neither one more or less traveled than the other.
The Road Not Taken Key Ideas and Commentary
The Poem. "The Road Not Taken" is one of Robert Frost's most familiar and most popular poems. It is made up of four stanzas of five lines each, and each line has between eight and ten ...
The Road Not Taken Themes
The main themes in "The Road Not Taken" are individual choices, the permanence of decisions, and uniqueness and narrative. Individual choices: The speaker initially hopes that his choice will ...
Reflection The Road Not Taken Assignment And Reflective Essay Example
The poem "Road Not Take;" by Robert Frost explores decision making as part of a complex nature of human race involving contradictory emotions of fear for unknown future, regret for the possible wrong choice and acceptance and pride in defining an individual. The lack of foresight and fear for choosing wrongly result the hesitance in making ...
Reflective Essay: The Road Not Taken
This essay is a reflective account on my experience within the introductory period of my practice when caring for a patient. The essay will give the definition of reflection. This reflective essay will help me demonstrate how my experience in practice has helped me achieve one of the learning outcomes in my learning plan, (appendix 1).
"The Road Not Taken": A Reflective Poem by Robert Frost
Words: 547 Pages: 2. "The Road Not Taken" is a mostly reflective poem written by Robert Frost. This poem is primarily about the choices one makes in life. Once someone makes a choice, it is usually for better or for worse, according to this poem. The poem utilizes symbolism as a reflective tool. For instance, the road is a symbol of the ...
The Road Not Taken English Literature Essay
Essay Writing Service. Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" is a well known poem that is admired by many. Andrew Lakritz, a literary critic notes, "It is a comforting poem, because it seems so clear, and its lovely conclusion, offers a wonderful self-congratulatory kernel of wisdom for the schoolchild to take home" (211).
Friday essay: exhilaration and fear
Earlier this year I visited Italy to mark the re-translation of my first book, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation (published in 1972). An attempt to explain the emergence of gay liberation, the ...
At Least 25 Reported Killed in Israeli Airstrike in Southern Gaza
Gaza health authorities said dozens more were injured, many critically. Israel said that it was targeting a Hamas member who had taken part in the Oct. 7 attacks and that it was investigating ...

By Robert Frost

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Decisions and Reflections in Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken'

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