The Road Less Traveled

The Road Less Traveled

In the poem "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, The narrator of the poem describes a path that comes to a fork in the road in the middle of the forest. The Story "Gregory" by Panos Ionnides describes a difficult decision made by a soldier who had an enemy's life in the decision that he made. Both the poem and story have similar motives in common. The road less traveled is full of difficult decisions that one must make, but is rewarding in the end somehow.

As the narrator in "The Road Not Taken" comes to the fork in the road he is presented with two decisions. He can either take the path that has been traveled by many people and is mostly clear and easy to walk on or take the path less traveled which looks dark, and debris litters the ground; clearly the more difficult path to take. However, the narrator says "I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference". Perhaps he was saying he made a choice that caused hardships for him but because of that, it has shaped him positively on his way through life.

The narrator of "Gregory" is faced with a similar decision as well, but less metaphorically. The narrator of this story is faced with a tough decision to execute a befriended soldier of the opposing faction of the war. He faces a tough choice when he is faced with the task of killing Gregory. The passage "A few days before, hadn't he killed with his own bare hands a scorpion that was climbing up my leg?" and "He used to sew on all our buttons, patch our clothes, darn our socks, iron our ties, wash our clothes...How the devil could you kill such a friend?" proves that the narrator had created a bond with Gregory and was having doubts about killing him. Regardless of the narrators gut feelings, he kills Gregory despite his pleading with the narrator. Unlike the Frost poem, the narrator takes the easy path, the road most traveled and kills Gregory instead of facing a possible court marshal, which would have been the most the narrators government could have done to him if he hadn't executed him.

Both the Frost poem and "Gregory" share similar aspects of sharing decision making. Frosts poem says that he profits by making a decision that was harder for him at the time, but paid off for him in the long run by possibly building important character traits. In