Analysis of Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"
...ively or metaphorically, "The Road Not Taken" can be applied to a person's life. The traveller is a person who has two choices, which are represented in the poem by the two roads in the woods. The person takes the time to consider both choices and all sides to them by examining the paths. The traveller cannot come back to the other road and as in life if a choice is made, it is impossible to redo. The person must choose between the choices many make or the choice that few make. One of the attractions of the poem is its model dilemma, one that we instantly recognize because each of us encounters it innumerable times, both literally and metaphorically. He will wonder at what is irrevocably lost: the impossible, unknowable Other Path. But the nature of the decision is such that there is no Right Path--just the chosen path and the other path. What are sighed for ages and ages hence are not so much the wrong decisions as the moments of decision themselves--moments that, one atop the other, mark the passing of a life. Both roads were in about the same condition; it is what the man does with his choice that makes the difference. This poem supplies the reader with a situation that people have to face at least one situation in their lives. That situation being that everyone has to struggle to try and put their life on the right road. ANALOGY: If someone was standing at the edge of some woods you would not be able to clearly see what was ahead of you, because it would be obstructed by trees and branches. Life is like those woods because no one can clearly see or predict what will happen in the future, only hope to choose a path that will lead you to g...