The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost - Book Report/Review Example

The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost Many of the crucial events in my life so far had been designed by the choices I had to make between some deceptively similar options. But to be frank, I never had the option to realize what a difference it would have made if my choices were different from the ones I took. I realize now that our life is a one-way journey in which we seldom get a chance to revisit the spots of forking paths where we were forced to choose only one among them. We would never be able to try out a different route from the same spot to see the difference. Reading Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” has made me reflect more on the situations where I had to choose my path by instinct and disregard the other options. I was sixteen years old when I started to take seriously the questions by my teachers and parents regarding my ambition in life. I was a bit confused because I was not sure whether my passions and aptitudes were in the same direction. While I had a perfect academic record in Science and Maths, my performance in Humanities subjects was not rated excellent, according to the school grades. I was much above average in my language ability tests and fared reasonably well in the English compositions, but there were always many other students who were better than me in those areas. Therefore, the general direction in which my teachers and parents wanted to guide me was towards a higher education in Science or Maths. I had enough opportunity to talk with my peers regarding our future decisions in education, and found out that most of them were comfortable with the idea of choosing a field in accordance with their school records and aptitude test results. But I felt I had a serious problem regarding this, since I needed to pursue a course in the Humanities field, preferably related to language and literature. This happened to be something against the expectations of those who tried to guide me. I knew that I could not rely on the opinion of others when it came to my final decision. It might be true that I would have fared well in a subject for which I could score high marks, but I was sure that I would face difficulties in the future if I chose a subject apprehensively. After thinking about it seriously for several days, I decided to follow my instincts. I was fortunate that the grades for the subject of my preference were much above the qualifying criteria, so that no one could question my personal choice. The curious fact is that the time I spent to contemplate on the merits and demerits of my decision had been marked very much by intense thoughts on what would have happened if I chose a path against my will. And these thoughts remain with me even now, though I know that I could not go back in time and change my decision. Frost’s poem has in fact disturbed me more in this direction, but it has eventually led me to the realization that we need to accept the consequences of our decisions wholeheartedly. The traveler Frost presents is intent on scrutinizing the two options as clearly as possible. At the point of his decision, he is totally in the dark with regard to its outcome. Both the paths seem so similar that it is in fact difficult to predict the differences a specific choice would make. During my days of confusion, I was also undergoing such a phase of constant analyses and comparisons. Nothing seemed clear then, except the fact that I had a personal liking for one specific choice. It was impossible to explain my reasons to others, or even to myself. At the same time, I was concerned whether the choice I was about to make would harm me in some way in the future. I felt that it would have helped me a lot if I had the option to try out both the choices and to gauge the relative advantages. But like the traveler in Frost’s poem, I realized that “…I could not travel both / And be one traveler…” (Frost, lines 2-3). I knew that there was no use in trying to learn about the differences from the experiences of others, since my individuality and life experiences were not similar to theirs. Therefore, I had to bring myself to the task of choosing one among the two paths that looked almost the same to me. The reason why I chose a course in Humanities was because I knew that I had a passion for it, even though I had better grades for science subjects at school. I knew that I could improve my performance in my chosen subject with some extra effort. In that sense, I knew that I was choosing a path that was slightly difficult than the other. But in this too, I realize I could not have been really sure that the other path would have been easier. However, I could only be guided by what I could assume from my limited experiences and the information I could gather from other sources. Even though my elders had tried to guide me through the advantages of one choice over the other, I preferred to be left to myself, reflecting on the cause and effect factors. I liked to see both the paths as presented freshly to me, with no prior knowledge to where they would individually lead me. Frost’s protagonist surveying the paths as far as he could to make out the differences reminded me of my earlier predicament. Like him, I saw the paths, “…both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black” (Frost, lines 11-12). It was difficult for me appease myself with a decision that made all the difference. No matter how hard I tried to differentiate the paths and comprehend their twists and turns from a distance, I understood that it was not predictable which among the paths would take me to a more adventurous journey. I had to accept the fact that it was my instinct and nothing else that guided me. I never got over the temptation to look back at the moment of my choice and contemplate on the possible differences the other choice would have made. The traveler in Frost’s poem undergoes a crucial moment of doubt where he is not at all sure what effect his decision would make in the long run. He has a strong affinity to try out both the paths, but realizes that it is not possible to have them both at one time. And he also thinks of coming back to the spot another day and try out the road not traveled. But he knows that it is a remote chance, since he does not even know where the path he has chosen will take him and whether there will ever be a coming back. Even if he could come back, the options will then be altogether different, because by then, he would have known about the possibilities of one path and not about the other. Apparently, the adage that one could never step into the same river twice is applicable to every such option in one’s life. I am going through the path that I have chosen, and am still unsure about the difference it has made. I am totally clueless regarding the possibilities of the effects of the other option. I can try to believe that the choice I have made was the best one, but that would be an acceptance of the only life I have and the only time in which I could live. I wonder how I will look back at the choice I made in my younger days and the ultimate effects it had on me. Like any other human being, I will be tempted to justify my decisions and conclude that I had made the most of my opportunities. But I know that it will be only one side of the story, since I had never tried or known the possibilities of other options. The traveler of the poem thinks that he will be able to recount the decision he had to take at the forking paths to the future generation only “with a sigh”. The sigh could be symbolic of the nostalgic longing to be back at the spot once again and try out the road not traveled. Even as we are led by our strong convictions to our destiny, there is always an option that we have missed, which could have shaped our lives differently. When we boast to the future generations that we have lived our life the best way possible by opting a road less traveled, we forget that we haven’t tried out the other roads which would in fact have been the ones less traveled. Or, the idea itself of a road less traveled could be a selfish fantasy. We imagine ourselves to be born adventurers finding our own way through roads not taken by others. But the very fact that we travel through a road makes it clear that it had been made by others, no matter less or more traveled. The poem has had a therapeutic effect on me in many ways. The egoistic belief in the infallibility of one’s decisions would lead to a conformist attitude all through the life. When we claim that the crucial decisions we took in our life had made a great difference to us, we fail to understand that only one aspect of a cause and effect relationship is revealed through that experience. There were many other cause and effect relationships waiting to happen, which we had discarded. We may have our own reasons to justify our decisions, but it is not fair to assume that the other possible options were irrelevant. In my case, I will never know whether I would have fared better in life if we I had chosen Science or Maths as my subject for higher studies. I can talk about the positive or negative aspects of the decision I took, but that is always restricted to the cause and effect relationship of one decision. The speaker of the poem is revealed to be unsure of his decision even in his ostensible recounting of the event in the future. The sigh, and the repetition of the pronoun ‘I’ betrays his confidence. He knows his exhortation to the coming generations to choose the road which is less traveled will not in any way be beneficial to his listeners. His longing for the road not taken is reflected in the title of the poem as well. One can be contented that the effect of a particular decision taken in life had come out well, but it is impossible to assume that the effect of a particular decision not taken in life would have been better or worse. After reading and trying to understand the cause/effect arguments presented in the poem, I realized that our lives are filled with different possibilities. We can choose only one among the many options we have. Our life is shaped by these specific options we choose. But we are always left with a longing for the options we had to leave out. We can only keep on wondering what difference those other options would have made in our life. We can never claim that a specific decision in our life has made all the difference, since we never know what all the difference is unless we could try out the other options. Reference Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken”. Read More