Page 2 - ROAD NOT TAKENMODULE

Introduction

In the poem - ‗The Road Not Taken‘, the road symbolizes our life. The poet says that
the path that we don‘t choose in our life is ‗the road not taken‘. He describes his
feelings about that choice that he had left in the past. The path which we have
chosen, decides our future, our destination. The important message that the poet
wants to give is that the choice that we make has an impact on our future and if we
make a wrong choice, we regret it but cannot go back on it. So, we must be wise
while making choices.

Key Points:

 The dilemma of making choices about the direction of one's life
 Whether to take an established, safe road, or a risky, more adventurous path.
 The speaker chooses the latter, saying of the decision to take the "road less
travelled" as one that has "made all the difference."
 The speaker spends a while deliberating when he comes to a fork in the road,
which symbolizes a choice he must make in his life.
 Ultimately, he has to make some decision, but he will spend the rest of his life
haunted by, or simply curious about, what could have happened if he had
chose the other path.
 The choice that he made "has made all the difference" in his life. Whether this
is for better or for worse is ambiguous.

Poem and Explanation

Stanza 1

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

diverged: separated and took a different direction
yellow wood: a forest with decomposing leaves
undergrowth: dense growth of plants and bushes means the forest)

Once the poet was walking down a road and then there was a diversion, there were
two different paths and he had to choose one out of them. The poet says that as he
was one person, he could travel on one road only. He had to choose one out of
these two roads Yellow wood means a forest with leaves which are wearing out and
they have turned yellow in colour – the season of autumn. It represents a world
which is full of people, where people have been living for many years. They
represent people who are older than the poet. The poet kept standing there and
looked at the path very carefully as far as he could see it. Before taking the path, he
wanted to know how it was. Was it suitable for him or no. He was able to see the
path till from where it curved, after which it was covered with trees and was hidden. It