When we’re trying to analyze something, we have a tendency to jump to what we feel the meaning of something is (be it a film, a piece of art, a poem) before we take in all of the clues. This can be especially true for Christians, because we’ve been conditioned to look for deeper meaning in the world around us. A great example of this behavior is the poem: “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. Now some of you are thinking: “Isn’t the title ‘The Road Less Traveled?’” No, it’s not. Most people have never actually sat down and read the poem, they just know the three lines: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…I took the one less traveled by / and that has made all the difference.” But these three lines have been taken out of context, we’ve zoomed in on them, and neglected the rest of the poem, which isn’t about the road less traveled, it’s about “The Road Not Taken,” which is the poem’s title. This is the full text of the poem:
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.
No one pays attention to the end of the second stanza, which says that the paths were worn "really about the same." Nor does anyone acknowledge that the narrator tells this story "with a sigh," which indicates that maybe he's not very happy with the road that he chose to take (hence the actual title of the poem, "The Road Not Taken.")
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