![]() When we encounter choices in our lives where find that the leaves are not "trodden black" by what we learned from the people around us, it becomes harder to make a decision between them, just like the situation of the character in The Road Not Taken. These experiences then leave marks in the choices that we have, these marks then form our bias towards or against that path. ![]() Sometimes in life, when we reach a fork, we are able to make quick decisions based on what we learned from other people's experiences. He notices that both choices lay equally in front of him and none of these choices have been "trodden black". ![]() His honesty is a reality check as well as a means of making a final decision. This stanza shows us that this character is truly being honest with himself, as he makes the crucial decision of which road to take. Lines fourteen and fifteen give us a glimpse of his doubts as he honestly confesses to himself that it's highly unlikely he will come back to travel this other road because he knows as he moves forward he will continue to find other paths taking him further and further away from this point, where he is standing at the moment. Line thirteen is an important point in The Road Not Taken as this is when the individual finalizes his decision of leaving the other road, for perhaps another time. No one had stepped through to disturb the leaves on both roads. In this third stanza, Robert Frost mentions in lines eleven and twelve that at the moment that this individual was making his decision, both paths were nearly identical. No matter where we end up, and how informed, tempting, and satisfying our choices were, we will always wonder the what if-s and the could have been-s of the other opportunities that we left behind. This underlines the nature of people in general, that we will always choose the path which seems attractive and is of interest to us, even if both paths have the equal potential of getting us to wherever it is we are headed. He felt that the road he chose "wanted" to be walked on by him. The important idea to note in this stanza is that the character claimed the road he chose was better because it "wanted wear" meaning, that it was tempting him. The diction in this stanza portrays the uncertainty of the character as he tries to justify to himself that his decision is the right one for him and much like anyone else, he is clearly trying to realistically weigh the outcomes of both roads. This stanza is important because it clarifies the common misunderstanding that one road was less traveled than the other since the character clearly states that both roads were "really about the same". However, in lines nine and ten, he is quick to add that the other road looked equally used in comparison to the one he chose, so it really wasn't as less traveled as he was telling himself. ![]() In this second stanza, lines six through eight: the individual in The Road Not Taken finally makes a decision and chooses a road that he thinks he believes is better, because it looked like not many people had walked on it before. We like to take our time in order to make informed decisions so we can justify our choices when the regret of missing out on the other "roads" starts to haunt us. By having the character in the poem examine the roads ahead of him, Frost is emphasizing that we all try our best to guess what lays ahead for us in every opportunity that we are presented in an attempt to find some control and later comfort over our final decisions. In order to gain some things in life, we must let others go. And like the character in The Road Not Taken, oftentimes, we are disappointed that we cannot hold on to, and experience the consequences of every opportunity that is presented to us. We experience this literally: in the roads we take and the routes we walk on a daily basis, and figuratively: when we come to points in our lives where we must make decisions for our next steps, based on the opportunities presented to us. We as people go through many circumstances and experiences in our lives, and one of them is choosing between two (or more) paths. This stanza introduces the dilemma that every human face, not once, but multiple times in his or her life the dilemma of choice.
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