The Road Not Taken

Although using a poet’s biography to provide historical context for a poem is often risky as it tends to limit the poem’s interpretation, Frost actually designed “The Road Not Taken” as a friendly jibe at a young neighbor named Edward Thomas (1878-1917), whom Frost met in Dymock when he and his wife moved into the cottage next door to Thomas and his family. Thomas yearned to be a poet, but he pursued any writing opportunities he could find that would pay, mostly travel essays and book reviews. Frost recognized Thomas’s keen ear for the music of language and encouraged him to pursue poetry during meandering walks the two would take about the Gloucestershire countryside. What irritated Frost, however, was Thomas’s habit of lingering about the paths that laced the woods trying to decide which path to follow. Thomas serves as the model for the narrator of the poem, with Frost as the overarching author(ity) finding the hiker fussy and compulsively indecisive. The poem was intended to good-naturedly poke fun at his friend’s grand Hamlet-like diddling over what was in perspective a trivial choice. The narrator ironically dismisses as wasted energy the endless dithering over alternatives.