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1800-102-2727The "Road not Taken," composed by Robert Frost (1916), was published in his collection of poems 'Mountain Interval'. Written in a narrative form, Frost wrote the poem for his friend Edward Thomas. Through the poem, the poet describes the inevitability of making choices and how making a choice leads one to question his choice.
The expression "yellow wood" signifies the Autumn scenery of a forest. The first stanza depicts a fork-in-the-road; the path of the forest diverges into two forcing the narrator to make a choice. The narrator looks at the paths and expresses his regret of not being able to travel both paths. In the second stanza, the narrator tries to make a choice by looking at the condition of the paths. He makes an observation that both the paths are equally unused. The condition of the paths leaves the narrator in a state of indecisiveness.
In the third stanza, the narrator makes a choice and comments that he shall travel on the other road another day. Immediately after, the narrator negates his thought by saying, "I doubted if I should ever come back". The narrator in the last stanza says with an undetermined sigh of relief or regret that in the future, he will share this story of when he had to make a choice "that has made all the difference" in his life. The word "difference" has been expressed very vaguely because it cannot be determined if it was a positive or negative "difference" in his life.
The poem deals with the theme of indecisiveness. Often, when we have to choose, we question it even though the choice was beneficial. We question our choice of thinking, what if the other way was better?
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