Fork Of A Road

Fork in a Road

"When you arrive at a fork in the road, take it." - Yogi Berra.

Everyday we are met with circumstances and with the circumstances come the decisions we make in order to fulfill our lives and make them meaningful. However, once we make a decision, after we pass that "fork in the road", we need to move on, accepting what we have done, because what has happened has happened and there is nothing we can do to change the past. Such is a case in Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken';, and Alistair MacLeod’s short story “The Lost Salt Gift of Blood';. While the persona in Frost’s poem has knowingly come to a dilemma, in contrast, the narrator in MacLeod’s story makes a decision without glancing to the future. Everyone is a traveler, choosing the roads to follow on the map of their continuous journey, life.

Robert Frost puts his persona in front of a road diverging, and he must make a decision on which to take. The two roads are almost identical, but one is less traveled by. He looks ahead, but can’t see far, due to “where it bent in the undergrowth';. Alistair MacLeod does it differently; the narrator has come to a fork in the road, but without hesitation he takes the more traveled by. This is the first contrast between the two literatures. "And both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black." the leaves had covered the ground and since the time they had fallen no one had yet to pass by on this road. Perhaps Frost does this because each time a person comes to the point where they have to make a choice, it is new to them, somewhere they have never been and they tend to feel as though no one else had ever been there either. The persona took the road less traveled by. The road he chooses makes him the man he is. MacLeod makes his narrator take the other road; he brings the glass of water to John’s mother without thinking of what lies ahead. To Jenny this had great meaning it represents engagement. Like most young males he takes the easy way and gets what he wants, or does he. He gets a son, loses his relationship with Jenny, and carries the guilt of not taking the right road before.