Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" depicts an image of a solitary traveler who has come to a fork in the road on his journey. The traveler becomes forced to choose which path to take because he can obviously not take both. That choice, as with any choice in life, affects him in a way that will forever change his life. In any case, this poem clearly demonstrates Frost's belief that it is the road that one chooses that makes him the man he is.
The narrator is looking back on the decisions that have affected him earlier in his life, in this first-person narrative. Since everyone has had to make a decision at some point in their life it is easy to look past the narrator and see oneself to some degree. Since the language used is very simple it seems as though the narrator is not speaking but thinking, for the language of thoughts tends to be simple without using complex wording. This simple, almost quiet and seducing tone acts to draw the reader into the poem allowing the reader to become the narrator.
Throughout the poem Frost uses images that could be either quite simple and very specific or incredibly involved and extremely general. For example, by interpreting images such as "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" (1), the "undergrowth" (5), as well as the rest of the poem very specifically one would see a simple story: A young man was walking down a road until he came to a point where the road forked. The man had to decide whether to take the "worn" path or the "one less traveled by" (19). He decided to take the less traveled path and keep "the first for another day" (13). Looking back on this situation, the narrator feels his decision has changed his life forever.
On the other hand, Frost could be using the images presented in the poem in a very involved and general way. The paths and the fork may no longer refer to their definitions, but instead as keywords in a description of life.
