The Road Not Taken Blog Entry

I think the "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost is an allegory a life-altering decision the author is deciding to make. Also, I believe both of his choices are equally tantalizing. Robert Frost hints at this in two lines: “Oh, I kept the first for another day!” and “In leaves no step had trodden black.” I took the latter to mean no one had had the chance to sully the trail before he got there. One troubling line is in the last stanza, “I shall be telling this with a sigh,” Does this mean the author regrets the decision he made? Or that he is nostalgically curious toward the trail he did not take in the first place? This poem is about life being full of choices, and the leap of faith you take when you make one. His choice of path probably led him toward a new job opportunity, or someone he wished to marry, but either way, he chose it, and now, he has to deal with the outcome.

1.     I don’t necessarily think he regrets his decision, but that he wonders what would’ve happened if he had taken the other road. The same way that a student may think they should’ve taken just Pre-Calculus instead of fast track, or a small business owner wondering whether they really should’ve started their own firm.
2.     It’s like The Butterfly Effect, little things can cause big changes. Even though he may have been deciding between two different career paths, maybe the love of his life worked at Walmart, he chooses Fred Meyer, and now they’ve never met. Or say he chooses Walmart, they meet, she gets pregnant, and now he’s stuck at a dead-end cashier job with another mouth to feed. Either way, he’s lost something but also gained from his experiences.