The problem of choice is one of the major themes in Frost's poetry:
In the poem The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost enables the reader to see the choice that has made that impacts his life. The metaphor, the descriptive imagery, and the poem's structure shows that the road the poet has chosen made all the difference in his life. A person's decision often affects his life. A good decision will lead him on a good road, while a bad decision will lead him down a bad road. We may not know if our decision may be the right or bad one at the moment, but we will see the outcome in the end. Things happen in your life based on how you decide things not how other decide things.
In his book Human Values in the Poetry of Robert Frost, George W. Nitchie has drawn our attention to the fact that the problem of choice is a theme that occurs in the poetry of Frost again and again. It is like a resting point to which Frost keeps returning on and often. Along with this poem, Frost has written many poems in which the question of making a choice is the central point— choices that have to be made compulsory, choices that have been made, choices that could not be made. Crucial moments when choices have to be made are distinct spots of time in human life and hence find recurring mention in literature right from Homer down to our present day fiction. But their constant recurrences in Frost’s works have more to them than the obvious fact that Frost is a writer. With Frost, these moments become the theme themselves, not just a prop or a backdrop for developing his themes. Perhaps if asked, Frost would define man as a choice - making animal. From birth till death, he has to make choices at every step - he chooses deliberately— and in the best of men, it (this act of making a choice) is often coupled with a thorough knowledge of the consequences implied in making the choice.
In The Road Not Taken, the problem of choice is very elementary. There are no obvious reasons for Frost preferring one road to the other. There are no residues of self - respect, moral obligation, not even curiosity in Frost's preference of the road he finally did take. In interviews, conversations and lectures, Frost always stresses that through the road he had taken had:
“...….. Perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.”
Hence we find the poet's choice was logically incomprehensible and appears wholly arbitrary, whimsical and undetermined. But perhaps it was not without an intuitive impulse that it was motivated.
Poet’s Mental Conflict at the Choice of Road:
The narrator's decision to choose the “less travelled” path demonstrates his courage. Rather than taking the safe path that others have travelled, the narrator prefers to make his own way in the world. He only distinguishes the paths from one another after he has already selected one and travelled many years through life. It is only as an old man that the narrator looks back on his life and decides to place such importance on this particular decision in his life. During the first three stanzas, the narrator shows no sense of remorse for his decision nor might any acknowledgement that such a decision be important to his life. Yet, as an old man, the narrator attempts to give a sense of order to his past and perhaps explain why certain things happened to him. Of course, the excuse that he took the road “less travelled by” is false, but the narrator still clings to this decision as a defining moment of his life, not only because of the path that he chose but because he had to make a choice in the first place.
During the course of his journey, the poet reached a point where the road bifurcated into two different directions. He was not able to choose the road on which he should travel. After great mental deliberation, he finally decided to leave the road which was more frequented, and moved ahead on the road which was less travelled by. This choice made all the difference in his life. Louis Untermeyer says: Robert Frost has gone his own way. He could not help it; his destination— and perhaps his destiny — was directed by the spirit behind the man. Once while travelling alone, Frost tells us, he stood at a point on the road, undecided which part to take. Finally , he chose one because it seemed a little less frequented, though actually there was no such difference, for the passing there had worn them really about the same: yet even at the moment of choice, the poet quizzically imagined that the choice was important, that he would someday tell himself he took the less travelled road:
“And that had made all the difference.”
The poet's difference is in him from the beginning, long before he sets out bon his career. The road that Robert Frost took was not only the “different” road, the right road for him, but the only road he could have taken.
Despite the fact that this is a very famous poem of Frost, some adverse criticism has also been offered. One such critic is Winters. He says: “The Road Not Taken, for example is the poem of a man whom one might fairly call a spiritual drifter; and a spiritual drifter is unlikely to have either the intelligence or the energy to become a major poet. Yet the poem has definite virtues and these should not be overlooked. In the first place, spiritual drifters exist, they are real; and although their decision may not be comprehensible, their predicament is comprehensible. The poem renders the experience of such a person, and renders the uncertain melancholy of his plight. Had Frost been a more intelligent man he might have seen that the plight of the spiritual drifter was not inevitable, he might have judged it in the light of a more comprehensive wisdom. Had he done this, he might have written a greater poem. But his poem is good as far as it goes; the trouble is that it does not go far enough, it is incomplete, and it puts on the reader a burden of critical intelligence which ought to be borne by the poet.”
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