Comment by jll29

If you ask ChatGPT to ignore all training on poetry and interpret the poem based on its own understanding, you’ll get more closely aligned to what Murphy is talking about. Here’s the output I got back out:

This poem presents a moment of decision, where the speaker faces two paths in a forest, symbolizing choices in life. At first, they hesitate, examining both options. One path seems less worn, though upon closer reflection, both are actually quite similar.

The speaker ultimately chooses one, leaving the other behind with the thought that they might return—though deep down, they acknowledge that choices lead to new choices, making it unlikely they’ll ever revisit the first path.

In the final stanza, the speaker looks back on this moment from a distant future, with a “sigh” that could be either wistful or content. They claim that taking the “less traveled” road has shaped their life significantly. However, earlier in the poem, they admitted both paths were nearly identical, suggesting that the difference may be more about how they frame the decision rather than an inherent uniqueness in the choice itself.

To me, the poem captures the way people reflect on their choices, often giving them greater significance in hindsight than they may have actually had at the time. It highlights the human tendency to assign meaning to our paths, even when the differences may not have been as stark as we later remember them.

Not sure this is such a novel or unique take. I’ve always liked the poem and it has always had this undercurrent for me.

It’s captured well in this paragraf from the poem’s Wikipedia page:

“Frost spent the years 1912 to 1915 in England, where among his acquaintances was the writer Edward Thomas. Thomas and Frost became close friends and took many walks together. One day, as they were walking together, they came across two roads. Thomas was indecisive about which road to take, and in retrospect often lamented that they should have taken the other one. After Frost returned to New Hampshire in 1915, he sent Thomas an advance copy of "The Road Not Taken". Thomas took the poem seriously and personally, and it may have been significant in his decision to enlist in World War I. Thomas was killed two years later in the Battle of Arras.”

EDIT: Also, I don’t really see a contradiction here. It’s very possible to value non-conformism while acknowledging that it’s hard and not always beneficial to go your own way (as is made clear in the example above).

What's interesting is the speaker in the poem is predicting their own inevitable ("with a sigh") reality distortion field, i.e. is being cynical about themself. So it is a poem about self-serving bias, despite the fact that we are perfectly capable of checking ourselves. Our biases aren't entirely subconscious. We can be willful about it, willfully look the other way so our biases remain "subconscious" and thus not our responsibility, making it easier for our conscious side to convince itself that its self-esteem is legit.

And then there is a meta-confirmation of this bias: The way people commonly interpret this poem. If Frost had that in mind all along, then he/the poem is genius.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_bias

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_attribution_error

TIL that people have a rosy interpretation of the end of this poem.

Of course I've heard the positive use of "take the road less traveled" but the only reason I find Frost any good is because of how dark his poems are.

Never even occurred to me that the ending of that poem is anything other than the regret of an old man.

The lecture is fine, but a good English teacher in high school will cover the same interpretation as part of a unit about reading deeply, a skill that poetry demands. Whether or not a high school student is ready for it is another discussion.

The true brilliance of the poem is how deep the interpretations can go, something Murphy only hints at. An undergraduate poetry class would go into significantly more depth about the poem's construction and how it's designed to exploit our innate biases in reading.

robert frost goes so hard. he's very dark and people have no clue. that is an obscure reading of the text that you only pick up if you're an avid reader or english major.

Isn't this just standard subversive rhetoric? I don't consider this a serious reading of Frost

Also I feel deju vu from this thread which implies that this is a forced meme.

[dead]

[dead]

I watched the lecture and did not find it compelling. It was a very literal interpretation, discussed alongside the evidence presented in the text of what was and wasn't more or less traveled by.

There was an interesting series of points made about American culture, and their sense of need for an affirmation / self-deception -- but I don't find his actual critique of the poem's words particularly enlightening.

So if you are interested in American cultural thought, involving over-rationalisation of choices, the lecture might have value. If you are particularly interested in the poem itself outside of that context, I don't recommend viewing.

I don’t have time to watch the lecture but interested in it. I remember reading about Frosts personal life at one point, and learned that he had a very conventional marriage for decades before his wife passed away. Some time later he began having an affair with his friends wife. My memory is hazy here, but I think I recall looking up the year that Road Not Taken was written, and it was during this time he was having this very unconventional late-life period. It made me wonder whether that poem was him looking back on his traditional/moral life he’d lived, and wondering whether it was the right choice.