Diverging roads in a forest.

Everyone knows “The Road Not Taken”, or at least they think they do. That last line gets dragged out like it means something deep: “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” People slap it on posters and act like it says something profound about carving your own path.

But if you actually read the thing, Frost tells you both roads were basically the same. “Worn really about the same.” “Both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black.” There wasn’t a real difference. The choice wasn’t bold or rebellious. It was random.

The speaker even admits he is going to lie about it later: “I shall be telling this with a sigh…” That line doesn’t sound triumphant. It sounds like someone trying to justify a decision they barely understood at the time.

I teach this poem every year, mostly as a way to get students to slow down and actually read what’s on the page. It’s one of the best examples I know of how easy it is to bring your own ideas into a text and miss what the author’s really doing. Frost wasn’t handing out life advice. He was pulling back the curtain on how people fool themselves.

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;

• Robert Frost

One brightly lit, the other descending through shadow with the faint promise of light at the end.

Classic.