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Again, however, Frost refuses to allow the title to have a single meaning: “The Road Not Taken” also evokes “the road less traveled,” the road most people did not take. The poem moves from a fantasy of staving off choice to a statement of division.
Although commonly interpreted as a celebration of rugged individualism, the poem actually contains multiple different meanings. The speaker in the poem, faced with a choice between two roads, takes the road "less traveled," a decision which he or she supposes "made all the difference."
Here, the road “less traveled by” is a metaphor for the choices less preferred by humans. It refers to unconventional things that pragmatic society doesn’t follow at all. However, some people choose such unconventional options.
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; 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.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
Because the poem isn’t “The Road less Traveled.” It’s “The Road Not Taken.” And the road not taken, of course, is the road one didn’t take—which means that the title passes over the “less traveled” road the speaker claims to have followed in order to foreground the road he never tried.
Feb 16, 2017 · Frost’s narrator comes to a fork in the road and, lamenting the fact that he has to choose between them, takes ‘the one less traveled by’.
