Robert Frost Analysis

Anytime we make a spur of the moment decision we later find that we made a propitious selection or we regret it. In "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost seems to be showing that the decisions we make in life should be chosen carefully because once you make that decision there is no going back and changing the decision you made. Making a decision should always be a careful process that is thought out very well. A lot of people don't think that decisions have as big of an effect on your life as they do. Deciding to eat pizza after sitting out on the counter all night long could mean you getting horribly sick or not even being affected by it. If you would decide to eat the pizza, when you got sick, you would most likely immediately regret the decision. After feeling the effects of the sickness from the pizza, you would start to wish you would have made a better choice. If you would have chosen to not eat the pizza, you would have saved yourself a lot of trouble and never would have gotten yourself sick. The right decision would have been made because you would have carefully weighed out the pros and cons of each side of the decision. When a person makes a choice or chooses a road, a person needs to realize that this choice is final and he will not have an opportunity to change it in the future. This is also saying that you should not follow the crowd, be your own person, and take the path that you want to take, even if it's the one that is usually not travelled. Many people today follow the crowd, from the way they dress to how they act. A lot of people are afraid of being rejected and ridiculed by society. If you go to a mall, you'll see girls who are more or less carbon copies of each other, wearing similar clothing, make-up, and hairstyles. Many people have lost a sense of individuality and base how they act and look on the judgment of those who are around them. If everyone acted how they want to act, and was able to be themselves, society as we know it today would be different. There wouldn't be any cliques or anything like that. When people feel they have to follow the crowd and are afraid to be themselves, in general, a good portion of people will become depressed. The pressure of being victimized and suppressing your true self will take a toll and that person will develop feelings of depression. A lot of suicides today are for this very reason. If people would just be true to themselves, it would all be different and very many people would be a lot happier. The first couple lines, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, (line 1) and sorry I could not travel both (line 2)". Robert Frost is saying that he's looking at two paths that look similar and he would like to be able to travel down both but he is sorry that can't. The meaning of this line is pretty straight forward. In life, you can't always take two different paths you always have to choose. As hard as the decision frequently proves to be, it is unfortunate that most times many people wish they did not have to make decisions and that they wish to be able to have both at once, however different they may be. In the third to the sixth lines where he says "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". This means that when you have to make a big decision you want to look at all possible outcomes as far into the future as you can see. If you see one decision that doesn't benefit you in the future, you are going to take the other one as fairly as you would take the last. It's best not to just rush into a decision, you want to take a step back and think about it before you make a big decision. The last section of that, "then took the other, as just as fair (line 6)" could possibly be a metaphor for a spur of the moment decision. He was looking down one path for a very long time but then suddenly decided to take the other. For example, if you were thinking on staying with your girlfriend, for a long time but then one day, you find yourself dumping her and going down a different path. This would be a spur of the moment decision because you would not have seen it coming. Sometimes, it's a mystery even to us as to why we did it. Usually we're just satisfied with thinking that we'd be happier with the other choice. The last stanza, "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 travelled by, And that has made all the difference. (lines 16-20)" This can be interpreted many different ways. He could be sighing in satisfaction or sighing in disappointment. In my opinion, he is looking back on the memories and the decisions he made throughout his life. It is impossible to know whether or not he is happy with the decisions he made or if he wishes he had made some better choices. The interpretation of this depends on the reader. He is saying that he took the road that is not travelled as often and it made all the difference. It is unclear whether or not he made a good difference in his life or a bad difference. All in all, it is impossible to know whether the decisions you make will be better or worse for you. The important thing to remember is to just make the decision carefully and stay true to yourself.