Robert Frost - the Road Not Taken

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/life.htm

Life has many roads you can take and it's which ones you choose to follow that will shape your future forever. That is what I always take from this great Frost poem. He sees two roads both being equally appealing, but selects the one less traveled and how it makes his life unique. This poem is one of few that I do care for myself. It shows a man whose come to a point in his life where he has to decide what he will do with it. This is a point in our lives that everyone will come to and a somewhat difficult challenge for many. We have the many options ahead of us and must try and look ahead to what will come to decide our future. "And be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could." I think this was a time in Frost's life when he had just moved to London and was looking back at the choices he had made. He quit trying the Derry farm and sold it and moved to London to write. This was an awfully risky thing to do at this point with a wife and kids, but it shows his approval in retrospect. "Then took the other, just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear." This shows that he choose a path that many choose to not to. He selected a harder path in life that could have been a devastating mistake given his situation in life. The easy road would have been more secure and he would have had less to worry about, but he probably wouldn't have enjoyed life as much. "And both that morning had equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day!" This is the part of the poem I myself have always had a slight confusion with, but have taken it that it is supposed to show his selection of the more difficult path and how he would return to it later in life and try the other path. The thing that confuses me about this section of the poem is the next line." Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back." This to me shows that he wants to return and try different things in life, but knows once he has chosen a road trying a different one is quiet difficult. He selected the difficult road in life of being an author rather then to run the farm or to teach. I believe this is he missed teaching or even wanting to reattempt trying to be a Derry farmer since he was less then spectacular at that. "I