Did it really make all the difference?
That may well be the case with Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." You know the lines -- Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.
We view those lines, most often out of context, as being an inspirational reflection on forging our own paths, eschewing the way of the masses to find something better, probably, overlooked by the crowds who prefer the comfortable, well known routines that dominate daily life.
Take a chance, the lines seem to cry out, and you'll find serendipity that will completely change your life. Surely this is the case sometimes. We discover new music, new art, new food, new relationships that we gratefully recognize as being so much more interesting and challenging than the beaten paths we had followed. Of course, being the humans we are, those experiences stick in our minds and obfuscate our memories of the times the less-traveled path led us to a dead end, or to a morass that stuck to us and make our trek miserable. (For the pessimists out there, I recognize that sometimes it seems as though the road not taken more often leads to morass than serendipity.)
I mentioned last time that Frost went to England early in his career, making friends among influential writers and finding successful reception for his work. Among the friends Frost made was Edward Thomas, who mostly wrote essays, criticism and reviews, along with biographies, fiction and other prose works.
But he also wrote poetry, and after he made Frost's acquaintance, Frost encouraged his bent to poetry. In time Thomas would become more celebrated for his poetry than his prose. Unfortunately Thomas died in battle in World War I and did not enjoy the acclaim he received.
During their time together Frost and Thomas took long walks in the woods. Thomas had a habit of being indecisive when faced with a choice in the direction they could take on a ramble, and often complained after a walk that the choice they'd made didn't turn out to be much, and they should have taken another route because it probably would have been better. Frost tweaked Thomas about this in a in a letter, "No matter which road you take, you'll always sigh and wish you'd taken another." [*]
In letter to Thomas written shortly after the poem's creation, Frost complained about the response of a group of college students to whom he'd read the poem. They had "taken [it] pretty seriously ... despite doing my best to make it obvious by my manner that I was fooling."
Not long before Thomas left to fight in France, he received a copy of the poem from Frost. Thomas didn't recognize that the poem teasingly mocked him and wrote Frost back echoing the students' interpretation that the poem made a serious point about the need for decisive action.
Frost, disappointed with Thomas' response, replied that the end of the poem was "a mock sigh, hypocritical for the fun of the thing." Thomas took Frost's reply personally, feeling hurt. He wrote Frost, warning, "I doubt if you can get anybody to see the fun of the thing without showing them & advising them which kind of laugh they are to turn on."
If you read the poem carefully, you'll discover that Frost's description of the paths shows that they were likely equally traveled, and one merely seems to have been less trodden by hikers along the way. And he seems to express a wistfulness for the road he didn't take -- hence the title.
Whatever interpretation you place on the work, "The Road not Taken" reveals itself to the careful reader as far more complex than the poster photo of two paths plastered with the poem's last lines would lead you to believe.
[*] I originally encountered the idea that the poem was written as a joke in a few of Internet sites giving quick facts about Frost. None of cited a source. After more searching I found the information related above in an article written for the Poetry Foundation website titled Robert Frost: "The Road Not Taken" by Katherine Robinson, a graduate of Johns Hopkins University, who also pursued a postgraduate degree at the University of Cambridge. Quotes are from her article, and the rest is my summary. Any mistakes are mine.
Image: Edward Thomas, friend of Robert Frost and inspiration for "The Road Not Taken." Retrieved from Wikipedia, listed as public domain.
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