The Road Not Taken

Jack tapped the eraser of his mechanical pencil on the empty opened notebook barely staying on his desk. The little space available on the flat surface attached to his desk was seemingly meant for a left-handed adolescent which forced Jack to contort his body to accommodate the lack of area to rest his arm. He was uncomfortable, but then again everything in the dated classroom was so. Perhaps this was by design to keep restless college students from getting too comfortable.

Whatever the intentions were, the outcome was Jack’s lack of notetaking. His mind was elsewhere, which was common as he continuously thought of anything but the present task at hand. At this specific moment, he was pondering the different bird songs outside his  current poetry class.

The room was occupied mostly by students younger than Jack, finishing first year humanities requirements for their Liberal Arts degrees. Jack took the class knowing it would be easy, though being friends with the professor certainly helped as well.

The group discussion carried on with moments of Jack’s attention. Talk of stanza structure and rhyming verse dulled his mind, but at least the heavy dependence on nature as a subject matter interested Jack.

“Which brings us to what is likely Robert Frost’s magnum opus, The Road Not Taken”, said Professor Haight, “a short but sweet poem that packs far more punch than the word count suggests.”

This caught Jack’s attention. He pulled out his book of Frost poems and leafed to the center page, skimming the poem in the hope of gaining some participation points for whipping out a thought or two on the poem and remaining in the good graces of Professor Haight, who continued on, “so what is it about this poem that enraptured the American public and cemented Frost’s legacy as One Of The Greats?”

A pause fell upon the room.

“Well, don’t let me tell it to you. What do we think about the poem? Any initial thoughts?”

Professor Haight scanned the room, fidgeting with a long piece of chalk in his hand. A cloud of dust slowly fell into his lap, staining his pants with white dust.

Jack considered raising his hand but hesitated.

“Yes, Anna?” Professor Haight said, motioning to a woman across the room from Jack.

“It encapsulates the meaning of choice in one’s life. Having read it over and over again, I can’t help but feel it is a celebration of self-actualization through conscious individuality,” replied Anna.

Jack looked to the windows opposite professor Haight’s desk and watched a bird take off from the budding gingko tree outside.

That’s bullshit, he thought.

“Very good, Anna,” said Professor Haight, twirling some chalk in his hand. “So we have determined the poem represents life. But there is much more to this poem than just a celebration of choice, no?”

Now was Jack’s chance. He raised his hand.

“It’s right there in the title. The poem is about doing what others don’t. A road diverged in a yellow wood and I took the road less traveled. Does that not straight up say Frost is shunning the common path through life and doing it his way? The road less traveled basically means being a hipster will bring meaning to his life?”

Jack spun his pencil around and finally scribbled in his notebook Take the road less traveled. He underlined it a few times to add emphasis. Professor Haight pushed himself up from behind his desk and walked to the blackboard, chalk still in hand.

“It does indeed seem to portray Frost as a bit of a hipster, Mr. Armstrong, you are correct. Let us look at the first stanza, shall we?”

Professor Haight scribbled four short lines on the blackboard:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

“As Anna pointed out, we can view this setting as a metaphor for going through life, correct? The road in the wood can be interpreted as the path one follows through life. And we find ourselves at a fork in the road, in which a decision must be made. What else can we make of this stanza?”

Another student raised their hand and was called upon.

“I find the last two lines interesting. The road bends and what lies further on cannot be seen.  So that means the decision to go down that road would have something we won’t know about until we presumably reach the bend. Could that mean, I guess, that choices have consequences we don’t know about?”

“I agree with Kendra,” interjected a younger man whose name Jack didn’t know. “the bend signifies the mystery of life and the big decisions that shape our own lives but not knowing what can come our way because of those choices.”

Professor Haight replied quickly, “Ahah! Now we’re getting somewhere. You say this is a big decision, but let’s take a look at what comes next.”

He  began to write on the blackboard again, this time the second stanza:

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

Jack began to tap his pencil again. This time the graphite hitting his notebook page, creating a galaxy of dots surrounding his one written line Take the road less traveled. His mind soon wandered to the ginkgo tree outside, its leaves fluttering in the light April breeze while the discussion continued.

Another student spoke up, “So what your saying here is the choice isn’t a big one because the paths are basically the same?”

“Precisely, Wednesday,” said Professor Haight, “but then again, this could represent any decision couldn’t it? Big or small?”

Anna raised her hand again.

“There seems to be minor differences in the two roads because the second one in this stanza is grassy and wants wear or whatever. Maybe that shows some choices can be trivial on the surface but can send us in other directions we can’t determine in the present?”

“Anna you are getting ahead of us here, but I’ll oblige,” replied Professor Haight, who began scribbling the third stanza.

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

Wednesday began talking before Professor Haight could finish writing.

“Regardless of whether the choice is important or not Frost is telling us he must make a decision and will not be able to come back again to take the other road. Basically when we make a choice in life we usually don’t have the luxury to retrace our steps and go down another path.”

Anna began writing vigorously in her notebook with a concerned look on her face.

“That certainly can be the case here, Wednesday. But what do we sense of Frost’s tone in this stanza?”

A student next to Jack raised his hand which brought him back from his meandering thoughts which had wandered far further than the ginkgo trees outside. His tapping stopped and he began a list.

“I think he sounds sad,” said the student.

“Go on, Jackson. What makes you say that?” enquired Professor Haight.

“ I mean, he says he’ll save the first road for another day but probably won’t come back to this spot. He doubts he’ll be able to make this choice again because he’s committing to the second road. I guess he sounds sad because he can’t take both paths.”

Professor Haight nodded along with Jackson’s musings.

Wednesday chimed in after he finished.

“So Frost is on a metaphoric path in life and is presented with two options, which are basically the same. In the moment of choosing, he feels saddened that he cannot take both because he’s committing to the second road. So basically he’s being nostalgic about his life’s choices and what could have been if he took the other road?”

Professor Haight scribbled the final stanza on the little remaining blackboard space he had.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

“And that brings us to our final section of the poem,” he said as a matter of fact, “and Jackson you are certainly right. He is saddened, the key word being sigh in that first line of the fourth stanza. Nostalgia plays a large part in this poem. Think of your decisions in life. What made you come to Faber? I’m sure for some of you it was out of necessity whether that is due to scholarships, staying near to home or otherwise. Some of you come from the coasts, what would your life be like if you chose to attend another school, perhaps in a city instead surrounded by the beautiful maze we enjoy here in Indiana? Do you get sentimental? Do you think of what could have been?”

Students were nodding in agreement with the professor’s hypotheticals.

“Jack, you’re from New York,” continued professor Haight, snapping Jack from his list, “tell us why you’re here.”

“Oh uh, well, I wanted something different.”

A silence fell upon the room as if the others were waiting for him to elaborate. The tension built in Jack’s chest as he realized he should continue. “I mean, how far back do we want to go? I grew up outside of The City but never felt really happy at school. It was so ‘go-go-go’ and everyone seemed a bit fake. I had friends but never felt like I fit in. I would go to Michigan for summers with my grandparents but there I was a New Yorker, even though I felt more at home. It was where I was happiest I guess. So when the decision to go to school came up I decided I wanted to be somewhere completely different from where I grew up. And that ended up being the cornfields of Greenbridge, Indiana.”

Jackson leaned forward in his chair. “Was it what you wanted? Being here? I grew up in Chicago and I’d think the opposite of farmland is a city, not the suburbs.”

“Jackson, you’re not from Chicago, you grew up in Naperville”, interrupted Anna, “it’s barely a suburb of Chicago. It’s basically its own city.”

Professor Haight stepped toward his desk, seeing the conversation devolve. “Well regardless of the semantics of urban-rural development, where we come from and where we want to end up influence our decisions in life, no?” 

“Of course it does,” said Jack, “if anything I took the road less traveled because I came here, at least from New York. No one from my school has come here in ten years.”

“But I think the point Professor Haight is getting at is that now that you’re here, do you view your decision differently?” inquired Jackson.

“No, I think I took the road less traveled to be here. I wanted to do something different and here I am.”

“But we’re all here as well.”

Jack paused. He didn’t know what to say. He began tapping his pencil again.

“I hope we’re all picking up on why this poem struck such a chord in the American Psyche,” said Professor Haight, filling the silence while returning to his desk.

“But we won’t belabor the point. I want to turn our attention to one last issue. You’ve likely noticed the second and fourth stanzas contradict each other. Does anyone see where this happens?”

Wednesday’s hand shot up. 

“Both paths are the same. It’s there in the second stanza. Both paths were worn ‘just about the same’. But Frost says he took the road less traveled by at the ending.” 

“Precisely, Wednesday. And what does that say about our narrator?”

Wednesday bit her lip. “He’s an unreliable narrator? Like we can’t trust his telling of his decision?” 

“I think he’s justifying his decision,” said Anna, “if the paths are the same and he doesn’t know where either will end up, he probably wants to justify why he chose the road he ended up taking. The poem is likely a commentary on human nature’s innate ability to don rose colored glasses when we search for meaning in our lives.”

A bell rang and a shuffle of chairs and papers echoed through the room. Professor Haight called out over the noise. 

“Homework is to read Dickinson 70 - 120. I want everyone to continue going outside and finding a quiet place to observe for five minutes each day!”

The class began to empty the room and Jack, still at his desk, drew a box around his note: take the road less traveled.