Winter has criticized, along with this poem, several others like The Sound of the Trees, The Hill Wife and The Bearer of Evil Tidings Winters feels: "All have a single theme: the, whimsical, accidental and incomprehensible nature of the formative decision, and I should like to point out that if one takes this view of the formative decision, one has cut oneself off from understanding most of human experience, for in these terms there is nothing to be understood". In his well-known essay, "Robert Frost or the Spiritual Drifter as Poet", in one clean sweep. He has shown the wrath and ire of his angry mind through his devastating pen. Yvor Winters has spared no pains to speak in strong, derogatory terms about this poem. From birth till death, he has to make choices at every step - he chooses deliberately - and in the best of men, it (this act of making a choice) is often coupled with a thorough knowledge of the consequences implied in making the choice. Perhaps, if asked, Frost would define man as a choice-making animal. With Frost, these moments become the theme themselves, not just a prop or a backdrop for developing his themes. But their constant recurrence in Frost's works has more to them than the obvious fact that Frost is a writer. ![]() Crucial moments when choices have to be made are distinct spots of time in human life and hence find recurring mention in literature right from Homer down to our present-day fiction. Along with this poem, Frost has written many poems in which the question of making a choice is the central point - choices that have to be made compulsorily, choices that have been made, choices that could not be made. It is like a resting point to which Frost keeps returning on and often. George Nitchie points out that the problem of choice is one of the major themes in Frost's poetry. And this is what has made difference to the poet. In particular, the poet has an intuition that one day he will look back in retrospect and perhaps be glad that he took the less frequented road. It is in making a choice that one has to order one's priorities and is tested. One cannot always have the best of everything. In general, the poet realizes that a person has very often to make choices. Even at this crucial moment of having to make a choice, the poet was aware of the importance of the choice - in general as well as in particular. But the poet also realized immediately that there was no real difference because he's going through the road would have worn it about the same. Ultimately he was able to choose one road - the road which he thought was frequented by fewer people than those that took to the other road. ![]() He was indecisive and lingered on for some time. ![]() Frost found it difficult choosing to take one road out of the two. In this poem, Frost tells us that as he was traveling alone one day he found himself to have reached a point where the road divided into two.
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