The Road Less Traveled

In a high school English class I remember analyzing a poem by Robert Frost. It was about Christmas and the commercialization of it. I enjoyed the poem. I thought I did a decent job interpreting it. My teacher (one of my favourites) told me it was “a bit preachy for Frost”. I believe it was “Christmas Trees”.

"Two Paths Diverged in a wood" by Nathan Wert is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

I hadn’t read a lot of Frost at the time (and I haven’t since), so I didn’t really have the context to come to that conclusion, but his words stuck with me. In the intervening years I’ve heard Frost quoted many times, often in the context of someone claiming to march to the beat of a different drummer. Advocating for making bold choices, rejecting conformity or just having the courage to try something new. It wasn’t until I watched an episode of Orange Is the New Black that I got an even deeper appreciation for this poem, as Piper (a well-educated and slightly annoying prisoner) discusses the poem with fellow inmates.

Tricia: Chapman wrote me three letters for my case and it did fuck-all. They ain’t lettin’ people out who hasn’t done their whole time.

Taystee: Well, I ain’t people. I’m training for this, bitch. And I ain’t never comin’ back, neither, not like the rest of y’all. Like Oprah say, “the road less traveled.”

Piper: You know, that doesn’t mean what everybody thinks it means.

Taystee: Ah, shit, we about to get educated and shit.

Piper: No, no, no. I’m just saying that everyone thinks the poem means to break away from the crowd and, like, do your own thing. But if you read it, Frost is very clear that the two roads are exactly the same. He just chooses one at random. And then it’s only later at a dinner party, when he’s talking about it that he tells everybody he chose the road less traveled by, but he’s lying. So the point of the poem is, that everyone wants to look back and think that their choices mattered, but in reality, shit just happens the way that it happens, and it does not mean anything.

Tricia: I will probably kill her in her sleep tonight.

Taystee: Wake me up so I can watch.

— Orange Is the New Black, season 1, episode 7, “Blood Donut” (2013)

That was a genuine eureka moment for me and it also armed me with the kind of knowledge that makes me really annoying at parties. We’ve taken a surface-level reading of Frost and turned it into something that he didn’t actually say or even mean. For a deeper dive into the poem and how Frost may well have gotten a great laugh at what we’ve taken his words to mean, I refer you to What Orange Is the New Black Gets Right About Robert Frost by David Haglund in Slate, August 2013.

The Road Not Taken

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.

— Robert Frost, Mountain Interval (1916)