Why I Love Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"

     Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” was first published in 1916 and is one of the most famous American poems ever written. Today, it is one of the most commonly taught poems in American high schools. “Road Not Taken” is a poem about a man that comes to a fork in the road and he is unsure which way to go. He wishes he could travel both, but finally decides to take the one less worn, hence the title “Road Not Taken.” The speaker reflects on how he plans to take the road that he did not take another day, but suspects that he won’t ever come back. Instead, far off in the future, he’ll be talking about how his decision was final and life changing.

     The poem consists of four stanzas with five lines each, which is called a quintain. And in each quintain, the rhyme scheme is ABAAB. The rhythm of the poem is in iambic tetrameter. The rhythm of this poem makes the reader feel as if they are walking through the wood with him. It’s almost as if you can hear the speaker’s footsteps through the rhythm and rhyme of the poem. We can hear in the sound of the poem that the speaker isn’t speeding through the forest, but going along at a careful and slow pace as if he is unsure where he is going. This slight hesitation is obvious in lines 18 and 19 when he says, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-I took the one less travelled by.” The repetition of “I” makes it seem as if the man has stopped walking and everything has gone silent waiting for him to make a choice.

     This poem fascinates me because it is about choosing a road, literally and figuratively: the roads we walk and drive on and the roads we take through life. For every road you do take there is always a road you did not take. Right or wrong turn, whatever roads we take bring about major changes in our lives. And we’ll always wonder about the roads we did not explore.