Explication Of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken

The Road Not Taken: Poetry Explication Decisions are an everyday part of life. Although many decisions made throughout the day may not be crucial to our path of life, most every decision will affect life in some way. Pop tart or bagel, milk or orange juice, as well as drive or take the bus are all choices people make to begin their day, but Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” is a perfect example of a life altering decision. Frost wrote this poem when his dear friend, Edward Thomas, was stuck between staying with Frost and becoming a poet, or going to war against Germany in World War I. “Two Roads”, later changed to “The Road Not Taken”, angered Thomas, and caused him to enlist in the war, only to be killed in action two months later at Arras on Easter Day. "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost has a literal meaning from the speaker, or traveler, of the road he did not take, but the deeper meaning certainly shows how decisions alter your life. Notably, sorrow and regret is the tone of this poem, demonstrated in the very first stanza: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one

The speaker says he is “sorry I could not travel both”, meaning that he feels sorrowful about not being able to take both roads. This stanza has a much deeper meaning, more than just not being able to take a path. Although the speaker travels into a yellow wood, the paths represent a very important decision the traveler must make. This is an example of a metaphor where the traveler compares the decision to two paths in a wood. He observes the first choice, said as looking down as far as he could in line four, and tries to see where it will take him in the future. He only stops imaging the consequences of this choice when “it bent in the undergrowth;”(5), or when the future of the choice was no longer