Since we’re on the page about poems, here is my favourite poem from our Form 4 syllabus.
The Road Not Taken
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;
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having 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,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
In school, we were taught that this poem is about making choices in life, about individualism and non-conformity. And I was quite sure that that was all the poem was about. I loved it for that, because it rings true with what I try to tell myself. There are so many choices to make in life, how should I know which one to choose? So choose the one that not many has chosen.
But now that I’ve done some research on this poem, it turns out that it is one of the most analysed poems in American poetry. Apparently it was written by Robert Frost as a jab at his friend Edward Thomas, whom he used to take walks in the woods with. Thomas always fretted when they had to choose a path to take and wondered if they had missed out on a better path. And this poem, as interpreted by critics, is actually about regret and rationalising our decision.
I won’t claim to be an expert in literature so I cannot say for sure which is the true interpretation of the poem. But then again, literature is open to different interpretation. And to be honest, I do prefer the first one about individualism and non-conformity. But somehow I believe the persona is really just comforting himself. Because in the last stanza, he is saying to himself that he will say “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference,” He cannot possibly know what the outcome is, yet he has already told himself it will be this way. Doesn’t it just go to show that he has no confidence in his own choice?
To have made up your mind about something that is not yet certain, could mean only two things: you are overconfident or you have no confidence at all. And I don’t think the persona here is overconfident because he took such a bloody long time to decide which path to take! Therefore and therefore, the persona is really just trying to convince himself, “I won’t be wrong,”
It happens to the best of us. We always have to make decisions, to take one path means to not take another and as humans, we can’t help but to wonder what the other path could be like. What if we made the wrong decision? What if the other path was the way to go? What if we could have made it to the top if we had made a different choice? So we tell ourselves, we have to be right.
But you know what, our decisions and the choices we make, are what makes us us. And there’s no use crying over spilled milk! It’s true that the other path may have been the better one for me, but this is the one I took, and this is the one I’m going to live with.
And this is the one I’m living now.
A 1993 film, adapted from William Shakespeare’s play. This is one movie worth watching! The plot is nothing spectacular but the lines are so witty that you’ll find yourself laughing from beginning till the end. =)
