But in this case, Frost highlights another way we rationalize things: we crave meaning in our lives and often attempt to turn the trivial into the triumphant. It’s much more comforting to think we’re in control and mapping out our futures. Sometimes we just don’t want to admit that our actions were based on a whim and concoct a reason after the fact. Other times, we’ll come up with a better reason later and pretend that was our rationale from the beginning. Sometimes we convince ourselves that bad decisions were really good ones at the time we made them with the information we had. So how does our speaker get from acknowledging that the two roads are pretty much the same, yet at the end talks about how much of a difference it’s made by taking the one that is less traveled? It’s called a post hoc rationalization. Then he decides the second path is better because it’s been less traveled.īut he instantly takes this statement back in the next four lines. He looks down one path until it bends and he can’t see any farther. The first stanza describes our speaker walking through the woods and coming to a fork in the road. Yet read the descriptions of the two roads.
It hinges on the concept of the speaker taking the road less traveled. And if you use this poem as inspiration to live an amazingly unique life, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but the joke’s on you.
Because if they did, they’d realize that this poem has actually become one of the best jokes ever played on the English-speaking public. This poem serves as inspiration to probably millions. It’s become a testament to blazing your own future, asserting your own individuality, bucking the status quo and becoming your best self. This poem has spread through movies, ads, memes, hell it’s probably on some fortune cookie message somewhere.
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