![]() It was because he felt his friend was making fun of his trouble with making decisions. But it was not because Thomas had got it so wrong. But Mathew Hollis writes that Frost himself would warn his audiences – ‘you have to be careful of that one it’s a tricky poem – very tricky.’Įdward Thomas was troubled with Robert Frost’s explanation of his poem and the jibe about his sigh. People often assume the poem is called ‘The Road Less Traveled.’ Most google searches for Robert Frost are accompanied by the words Road Less Traveled. (Mathew Hollis, Edward Thomas, Robert Frost and the Road to War, The Guardian, July 29 th 2011).įrost explained in the ensuing correspondence with his friend that, ‘the operative word in that last stanza was ‘sigh’ and that the sigh was a mock sigh, hypocritical for the fun of the thing.’He chided his friend, ‘no matter which road you take, you’ll always sigh and wish you had taken another.’ (Mathew Hollis)ĭavid Orr says that the poems best known lines, the last two, imply a lonely path that we take at great risk, possibly for great reward. But Frost knew that was not possible for how could one assess the outcome of the road not taken. In fact, Thomas, himself a poet and a literary mastermind, thought the poem to be a simple morality tale. ![]() He found it ‘staggering’ and not at all associated with his own dithering. Each helped the other with his career, in a way that only poets can.įrost sent adraft of the poem to Thomas who instead of reading it as a gentle jibe to his ‘crying over what might have been,’ read it the way millions of people have read it since, focusing on the last two lines that imply that the road taken was the less traveled one and that’s what made all the difference in his life. Not only did the two walk together, but they were also best friends, like brothers. The two regularly walked around the countryside of Gloucestershire together. from Yale Law School, in his article ‘ You’re Probably Misreading Robert Frost’s Most Famous Poem’ (August 16, 2016), Robert Frost first titled the poem Two Roads which he had been inspired to write by his friend Edward Thomas’ habit of constantly wondering where a second path might have led them. It is an oft quoted section of many a graduation speech, mostly focused on the last two lines – ‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by…’Īccording to David Orr,the poetry columnist for the New York Review of Books and a J.D. The poem has often been believed to reference the American ideal of individualism, to walk off the beaten path, to take up the challenge and to beat the odds. It is a simple fork and the speaker has a choice. The road not taken is one of two roads that look quite the same, which one to pick is not obvious or recommended or even advised. We want to hear what you think about this article.The road not taken in the very popular Robert Frost poem is not the easier road, or the uphill road, or the less scenic one, or even the road that leads to a less desirable place. It is now widely considered to be one of the most popular works of American literature. ![]() “The Road Not Taken” was originally published in The Atlantic in 1915 along with two other poems from Frost. It’s a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives.” In the final stanza, we can’t know whether the speaker is sighing with contentedness or regret as he justifies the choices he’s made and shapes the narrative of his life.įrost wrote the poem to tease his chronically indecisive friend, Edward Thomas, who misinterpreted the meaning and enlisted in the military shortly thereafter, only to be killed two years later in WWI. In fact, the critic David Orr deemed Frost’s work “the most misread poem in America,” writing in The Paris Review: “This is the kind of claim we make when we want to comfort or blame ourselves by assuming that our current position is the product of our own choices… The poem isn’t a salute to can-do individualism. But as Frost liked to warn his listeners, “You have to be careful of that one it’s a tricky poem-very tricky.” In actuality, the two roads diverging in a yellow wood are “really about the same,” according to Frost, and are equally traveled and quite interchangeable. This interpretation has long been propagated through countless song lyrics, newspaper columns, and graduation speeches. Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” is often interpreted as an anthem of individualism and nonconformity, seemingly encouraging readers to take the road less traveled.
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