Dear Robert Frost,

After reading your poem, The Road Not Taken, back in fourth grade, I thought nothing of it. I honestly wasn’t very fond of poems when I was younger. To me, poems were just stupid words, one after another, that some people could find hidden messages encoded in them. I know that I couldn’t understand the subtext of a poem. But, after reading The Road Not Taken, I comprehended my conscience and knew that this poem meant something to me.

To me, this poem starts out saying that you have two choices, hence the first sentence. The choices could be anything, but one choice is taken more than the other. This happens a lot in life in general. People usually won’t make a decision that they truly believe in but a decision that the majority of the population would choose. I think this is true because people are scared to be different that the rest of the people in this world. The poem is saying just the opposite. It is saying take the path in which you feel is the right path, and not the most popular path. This will lead you in the right direction in the end. For example, a couple years ago I was grounded. I know that is blunt but I will get the message across. So, I was grounded and some of my friends invited me over to hang out. I could’ve easily disobeyed my grounding. Instead, I took the road less traveled, staying home and following my parent’s rules. In the end, it was the right choice.

Another message that I found in this poem is that it is easy to make the wrong choice. In the poem it states, “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.” These lines in the poem are basically saying the right choice (To where it bent in the undergrowth) is difficult to see. On the other hand, the wrong choice is clear (And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear). This is ultimately stating that wrong choice is easy to make mostly because it is chosen the most.

Finally, the last message I was able to decode from this poem is that when you make decisions based on what you firmly believe in, that separates you from the rest of the world. In the end of Robert Frost’s poem, it states that he chose the path less taken and in the end, that is what has made all the difference in his life. The same goes for everybody’s life. When you just be you and not follow along with what is “in,” you define who you are in life. This has led me to who I am. By not following the crowd, I have defined who I am today, Trevor.