This poem by Robert Frost was what solidified my writing journey. The poem is divided into 5 quintains, each with an ABAAB rhyme scheme and following iambic tetrameter. It details the speaker taking the road seemingly less traveled. Though he laments that he could not take both, he chose to take the one that had not been taken. Yet, the chosen route leaves doubt in the speaker, as he wishes to see the other. Both routes were just as equal in their weariness, so they were equally interchangeable. No matter which route the speaker chose, they would never see if the other path was better.

I find the misunderstandings of the poem to be fascinating. When I first heard it, I thought that the poem was about choice and how taking a road that was less taken would lead to greater satisfaction. However, further reading of the poem made me realize that the poem was never about choice at all. I believe that the reason why my reading of the poem was so misconstrued was because of the final stanza, which seems to hammer home that the speaker’s choice to take the road less taken was better.

Yet, the poem is not called “The Road Less Taken;” it’s called “The Road Not Taken.” And when I looked at the second stanza and did research on other interpretations of the poem, the idea clicked in my head. Frost was not saying that the road less taken was better. Instead, he was implying that the speaker was burdened by the regret of not taking the other path. The dash in the final stanza invokes a sigh in the reader, furthering the tone of regret that the speaker must feel for being unable to take the other path.