“It is a poem about the necessity of choosing,” he writes, “that somehow, like its author, never makes a choice itself-that instead repeatedly returns us to the same enigmatic, leaf-shadowed crossroads.” This conclusion will disappoint readers who pick up Orr’s book looking for a definitive interpretation, but it makes for a more profound study. ORR, A PROFESSOR at Cornell and a poetry columnist for the New York Times Book Review, concludes that “The Road Not Taken” is ultimately elusive. The questions it raises about the limits of self-determination are too searching. Still, even if Frost’s relationship with Thomas provided the occasion for “The Road Not Taken,” the poem is not tidily reducible to a joke about second-guessing. On this reading, the poem becomes a jab at wistful what-ifs, and we aren’t so far away from where we started-with a vindication of American decisiveness. During their hikes together Thomas would often regret that he had not taken Frost down a different trail. Road not taken poem series#(The Netflix series Orange Is the New Black offered a revisionist reading along these lines in a 2013 episode.)īefore settling on this approach, though, consider that Frost originally wrote “The Road Not Taken” to poke fun at his friend, the English poet Edward Thomas. Indeed, it is tempting to read “The Road Not Taken” as a critique of the decisive individualism that it is often taken to be celebrating. They were both worn “about the same,” and “both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black.” Furthermore, the poem is titled “The Road Not Taken,” not, as it is often mistakenly called, “The Road Less Traveled.” Even the closing lines offer what could be read as a hesitation (“I- / I”), one emphasized by the line break, while “difference” makes for a markedly ambiguous final word. In earlier stanzas the narrator admits that he didn’t actually see much difference between the two diverging roads. For the poem undercuts any simple cliché about self-assured decision-making. This reading focuses on the poem’s closing lines, which on their own do seem like the stuff of calendars, graduation cards, and inspirational posters:Īs Orr’s subtitle suggests, though, this pervasive reading does not stand up to scrutiny. Many take the poem as a “paean to triumphant self-assertion,” a classic American affirmation of choosing one’s own road in life. TV shows as varied as Taxi and Battlestar Gallactica have drawn on it for episode titles. It is printed on posters, coffee cups, and refrigerator magnets. News stories and self-help books allude to it. Nearly one hundred years later, it remains a classroom mainstay and regularly shows up in popular culture. Orr makes a persuasive case that it is “the most widely read and recalled American poem of the past century.” Written when Frost and his family were living in England, it originally appeared in his 1916 collection Mountain Interval. Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” is not just any poem, though. David Orr has written a 180-page book on a twenty-line poem.
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