I hate bringing this up here but, the more awareness and visibility we can get, the better. The situation in Colombia is dire. I encourage you to research for yourselves. I plead with you for your awareness and solidarity. It would also be of great help if we could get producers abroad to talk about this. Thank you. (I'm editing this as I re-read it. Sorry about that. I wrote it in haste...)

Robert Frost wrote “The Road Not Taken” as a joke for a friend, the poet Edward Thomas. When they went walking together, Thomas was chronically indecisive about which road they ought to take and-in retrospect-often lamented that they should, in fact, have taken the other one.

I remember it sticking out to me in highschool that this poem isn't positive. It's not negative, either. It's looking back and wondering 'what if?' The common interpretation neglects the ambiguity of the piece.

The title "The road not taken" doesn't refer to the road *others* didn't take, but the road the traveller didn't take

Frost wrote this poem to give his friend a good ribbing for being so indecisive... And the whole world COMPLETELY lost their minds with misinterpretation lol

I’ll never stop being darkly amused when the most mainstream interpretation of a work of fiction is the one that the work of fiction itself mocks people for making.

when we analyzed this in school, I went and looked at the guy's wikipedia page and it said that he wrote this as a satire and sent it to his friend who inspired it. and that the friend took it seriously and enlisted in the war and died. it was so sad

As Yogi Berra taught us, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

I want to say that the “road less traveled” could quite litteraly mean mean that “the road less explored/ thought apon” because he keeps thinking about the other path. It made a “difference” but that difference was a neither good nor bad difference, and could mean that he pondered so much on the other option, he could just be ignoreing what he has now instead of looking at the yellow woods around him and taking on his choice.

Honestly, when you broke it down slowly it feels like he's telling a story of regret. He kept thinking about the other path even after making the choice, and the full last paragraph feels like he's regretting the decision

I thought the title meant that the poem itself didnt exist; you panicked me for a moment there :p

"When it comes to analyzing literature a lot of us were taught that there's a right answer, and then when we escape the public school system... we swing to the other side of the spectrum and think that there are no right answers, and that any and every interpretation of a text is equally valid." Thank you so much for putting this into words! People need to find a middle ground between these two extremes.

Robert Frost is the most terrifying writer of modern literature. I can"t think of one poem I've read of his that makes me happy, though all have made me a better man.

This poem is like me reading a Choose Your Own Adventure book with four fingers stuck in the pages so I can go back to past choices and read other paths. That's what the speaker wants to do but can't.

I am reminded of a Kierkegaard quote, from memory: "Get married, and you'll regret it. Don't get married, and you'll regret that too." It's from Either/Or. It's about having to choose and having to live with the consequences of your choices. Making the choice to go down one road or the other might have made all the difference. But which difference? We'll never know.

This poem is famously misinterpreted. It's because nobody actually reads the damned thing, even though it's incredibly short.

I mean "I took the slightly more grassy road and that was pretty cool, I guess" doesn't sound as good.

I too, hadn't ever heard the full poem and I find the actual message a lot more relatable. Pick one and constantly wonder about the other. The path I took made all the difference, but it's a moot point; the difference is lost in a comparison I can't make because I picked a path and can't go back.

Ever since the fifth grade when we read this poem in class I always read the last line, _”and that has made all the difference,”_ as sarcasm.

This is my favourite poem for this very reason. It’s a great example of how art is such a personal experience to the individual. The meaning of this poem can be taken so many ways. It was written to playfully tease his hiking friend about his indecisiveness, but it actually upset his friend as he thought he was mocking him. Confident that the playful undertones were obvious, he read it to a class of students who, much to Frosts surprise, found it a deep and profound stance on individualism! Here’s another great example of a different interpretation. I’ve heard so many different thought provoking takes on this poem, it feels like you can view this through 100 of different lenses and find new meaning, and rarely the one it was intended to have!

STANZA Now that's a word I haven't heard in 15 years.

We shall be sharing this with glee, Somewhere on KZfaq, ages hence: Two takes diverged in analysis, and Zoe- She takes the take less taken, And that has made all the difference.

Me and a friend came to the conclusion that this poem was an exercise in self justification, the teacher just about failed us on the spot, good to see we aren't the only ones who see this poem differently.

It’s a poem about lying to yourself and everyone ignores the lying part and goes yes. I do this too. I can’t escape the feeling that it’s somehow ironic that everyone takes it at face value and then lies to themselves the same way the poem is sort of poking fun at in its own way.

I've long agreed with this interpretation. I think Frost was trying to point out our tendency to convince ourselves that our choices have more weight and meaning than they actually do.

The Gritty Hollywood Reboot™️ of this poem is that he travels back in time to travel the road again. Kills his alternative self to become to Path-More-Tavelled-By man. And then in the end truly learns that it never mattered in the first place. *Christopher Nolan dark bwwooonnng of dramatic tension*

I appreciate you stating the importance of the text in poetry analysis. In high school, I always struggled to understand how the teachers got their interpretations from the text, and grew to really hate poetry as a result. But these videos are starting to turn things around for me.

"When Robert Frost came to a set of 2 equal paths, he travelled the path on his left"

I've always thought that what the poem is really saying is that seemingly insignificant, spontaneous decisions will change the course of your life- for the better or for worse. And that you'd never know what your life could have been if you had chosen the other path instead.

My English teacher (I'm in high school) always says shell accept any interpretation we give as long as we can prove it with the text.

I always thought that poem was about decision making and how hard it is. because we don’t know what would have happened if we had chose the other, We will never know if we made the right decision or if the other was better. It’s about the regret of not being able to see them both through.

I'm inclined to think that the real magic of art happens in the mind and heart of whoever experiences it. We can discuss interpretations and share experiences, but everyone has their own experience and there's no right or wrong in that. As an artist I weave the fabric, but I don't get to decide what it is used for or if it has any use at all. If it evokes an experience that goes beyond my intention and gives a canvas for someone else to paint their emotions, it's all good!

"What is the most important step a man can take?" "The next one. Always the next one." - Brandon Sanderson

I always thought Frost was using the poyum as a metaphor for life. At childhood the traveler sees a world unhampered. As an adult they have to make a hard choice between no right answer. At the end where the traveler is looking back from elderly age they tell the lies that suit thier narrative. I feel as though Frost was trying to both comfort and warn. The traveler gives us the courage to choose but also not to listen to people whom say they have a truth.

It also bears mentioning that Robert Frost wrote this poem to poke fun at an indecisive friend, who ALSO got the wrong message, and Frost had to walk him through the text of the poem to explain the joke to him.

This sounds pretty good to me. I think humans have this idea that road less taken is somehow special, or better. I remember being taught it in church when I was little etc. I don't know where it comes from but we ascribe it to so many texts, when I think the reality is that the idea came first and then our interpretation of texts, not the other way around.

Well my interpretation is a bit dark, "All the difference" never imply its something good, by taking the path less travelled the traveller make a grave mistake, just like when you went against unity, you become an outcast

I feel like this poem is just about the feeling we get when we think about what could have happened if we made a different decision. Not necessarily an emotion as strong as regret, but a longing to see what we missed out on or were lucky enough to avoid by making the choices that we did.

I memorized this poem in the 7th grade and can still recite it from memory to this day, 37 years later. Shout out to Mr. Cole at Skyway Middle School who introduced me to poetry. I still compose it and love to read it to this day.

I've always interpreted this poem as being two identical choices, that, regardless of the outcome, would have mattered: the choice always has an alternative, but the speaker is cognizant of the moral that we are one person, and only walk each path once.

I interpret the last stansa slightly differently. Since it's looking forward to what he'll tell people in the future, I took it to mean that he was forcing himself to justify the decision in the moment even if it wasn't true.

This poem is Jeff Bezos writing about how he ‘started Amazon in a garage’ while neglecting to mention the million dollars of his parent’s money.

To me this poem is about our life choices... When we're young we make choices as best we can, but even a good choice may have a bad outcome, and we'll never know where other choices might have taken us. It's hard not to feel some regret. We know our choices matter, but we can never know how things might have been different. This poem perfectly expresses this to me ❤️

I always saw this poem as an “all roads lead to home” kind of meaning. Something like how one decision (like what path to take while on a stroll) won’t make a big impact on your life.

Yeah, I don't know how so many people miss it. Like, ever since sixth grade I'd get into arguments with my english teachers because I actually read the bit about the paths being worn the same

Amazingly, I never had to read this poem. Only know it through cultural osmosis so this is enlightening.

Reminds me of that song "Everybodys free(to wear sunscreen)" "Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old-- and when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders"

Great analysis. I hadn’t read this poem in over a decade and enjoyed rediscovering it with you. Your interpretation is simultaneously scary and comforting. Scary in that it challenges the concept of destiny; that the narratives we retrospectively author for ourselves in order to feel like things were “meant to be” is just a balm for creeping feelings of nihilism. Comforting in that it encourages acceptance for your decisions; it highlights the futility of regrets, as you put it: “sometimes you just make a decision and you have to live with it”. Love it!

Darn this editing style, I love the normal one but this is really cool too.

Here's what I get from that poem: At some point in our lives, we all look back at something we did or didn't do, and say, "What if?" We make decisions because they seem right at the time, but often we regret them, and even if we don't, we wonder if things would have been better had we made a different decision. We can't go back and change our decision, no matter how much we'd like to, and so we are where we are, for better or for worse.

I remember when we went over this poem in my Ap Lit class, I learned the more true interpretation and I related to it so much more: decision, regret, always wondering what could've been, not wanting to miss out on either choice, wondering how much it impacted your life. It made me appreciate Robert Frost a lot more

I never got the "common interpretation," I just cant think of it as being that the speaker somehow made a perfect decision, my thoughts were always that he had to have regretted the decision, that's why he looks back, imagining having taken the other, greener path, a very "the grass is always greener" (literally) message.

I always thought something was weird with this poem - the popular interpretation seemed really trite. I like it a lot more now, thank you!

Great video Zoe! I love this different style of video (I love the rest of your videos too). The story of this poem is also very interesting, apparently Robert Frost wrote this for a friend, mocking his indecisiveness and the over importance he gave to small decisions

I always felt he walked back the way he came, as opposed to taking either of the two paths in front of him There isn’t much textual evidence for this, but it just fits in best with my personal life experience, and I guess it could be an explanation for why he was able to find a difference in the particular path he took

I feel like he’s saying the consequences of the meaningless choice he made, made the choice meaningful. We’re always curious about what would have happened had we made a different choice and, in a sense, all choices are meaningful.

This poem was my English final in high school. I didn't know it beforehand (being Italian I only knew the poets we'd covered in class) and of course went with the popular face-level reading. I remember going back home, googling it and smacking myself in the forehead when I read it was actually supposed to be irony. Luckily, it seems, my exam commission hadn't picked up on the irony either, because I got a full mark.

I was trying to choose between two Robert Frost video essays to watch on my KZfaq homepage and the thumbnails were both pretty good. Actually yours was better so I clicked on it and the algorithm spirited the other one away. I'll probably tweet about this later like "wtf" but I decided to watch your video with the better thumbnail and holy smokes... it changed everything.

More than anything this sounds to me like a poem about regret and wondering how a different choice might have made your life turn out differently.

Every other sentence: "doesn't exist" Me questioning my own existence 👀 👄

Once I started working in my current profession, this poem always felt like a metaphor for that time in early adulthood when you are actually taking the first steps toward what you want to do "when you grow up." There are so many moments when you make a choice that will point you in a certain direction. Each choice seems to make all the difference in the world. And while you might be choosing the path you think is different, unique, well trodden, etc., it turns out many of the paths are very similar. And, yet, it is unlikely you will ever be in the position to make that same choice again. I have always hated the common interpretation of poem, because it is so overly dramatic. The paths, as described, are both very fine paths...it's not like the "one less traveled" is muddy and hard to navigate.

I think people only 'misinterpret' this poem because some of its lines are usually taken out of context for inspirational quotes. It's not in itself trying to be tricky or conceal its regretful meaning, and neither is the meaning hard to glean because the text is overstylized. Rather, it's written in a very straightforward and unadorned way. The lines "I kept the first for another day!" and "I shall be telling this with a sigh" are very easy to understand, as far as poetic language goes, and make a positive reading of this poem patently incorrect.

What I got when I read it in high school was that sometimes you have to make arbitrary choices that have big impact in our lives and it might feel like you are missing out on whatever choice you aren’t taking, but that’s ok. I see “that made all the difference at the end” after all the hesitation as the author looking back and seeing the road not with regret but with appreciation cause it got him to wherever he is today. For me the message is: At the end what’s important is not which road you take, but that you keep going forward, so dont let the fear of missing out control you.

I LOVE your videos, Zoe and i love binging them. I'm glad you're getting views.

I adore that you told people not to be a jerk about their misinterpretations. Thanks for another very quality piece of content!

Yes - a commentary on the narratives we all create about our own lives. It's one of the things that always stands out when I read an autobiography - the bit where they basically go "well I was always good at x / loved x as a kid" where x is the thing they became famous for. But the reality is they have re-enforced the memories/feeling about that particular thing after the fact - essentially, a form of hindsight that imposes more structure and decision making than there probably ever actually was. The sports-person was probably good at / loved lots of sports, but the one they ended up having a successful career in is the ones whose associated memories get cherry picked later to re-inforce / impose a narrative to their life.

i’m dumb so i thought the narrator was like upset that he ruined the grassy path by walking on it i was in middle school i didn’t understand all the fancy language

My English teacher in High School brought this up when we did our study of Robert Frost. And this was, in my opinion, my second favorite poem. My teacher told us that apparently Frost wrote the poem as a satire essentially. One of his friends went on a walk with him and was incredibly indecisive, it was quite the interesting story! I do still prefer “Out, Out-“ but this is a close #2

I would add to the poem. "walk the path you want, discovered or not. Walk, but carry a pen , a paper. Write the path, for someone to traverse Thru the same , and then they will make The same for the next kin behind them. Stay put, stay brave. Those dark avenues will be filled by Mark of your boot."

This was really well done! I myself am horrendously bad at interpreting literature, so it's always interesting to see people pick it apart into something deeper.

It sounds more like at least to me when he talks about remembering how he got where he is he will remember it and speak of it as something more grandiose than it actually is and he will say I took The road less traveled and it made all the difference. So basically he saying when he's older he will romanticize this path.

We need many more educators like you. You took the thoughts straight from my head. I couldn't have explained it so well myself.

I've always loved this poem. My interpretation was always pretty close to yours, but I pictured the speaker being self-aware of how his future self would elaborate on the tale, assigning importance and meaning to his arbitrary decision.

I've had this poem memorized for years for the sole purpose of convincing people that it is not about life decisions but a single intimate encounter Frost had and the choice of additional intimacy the morning after this one night stand.

This makes me think about an article I read that did a poll on the most common regrets of dying patients in a hospital, and the top two were "working too hard not making time for my family" and "not chasing my dreams", the article was some inspirational piece about not leaving regrets behind, but my takeaway was that the people who chased their dreams couldn't have time fore their family, and the people who did, didn't have time to chase their dreams. This is what the poem reads to me, we would all like to take both paths and see which one is better, but we only have one shot and we only have so much time in life. At the end of our short journey, we will always have regretted and wandered "what ifs" about the path we didn't take, because no humans are ever truly satisfied with their choices, especially at a time where you have no chance to make another.

What a hot take! I haven't thought about this poem in forever; the realization that the last line is looking to the future was worth every minute of this video. Thank you for sharing

What's with the creepy glitching over the Patreon plug at the end? I stepped through it frame by frame and saw a bunch of text in various non-latin alphabets, the sequence of which appeared to run twice.

9:09 Thought I was about to be taken to the mfin Eyeball Zone.

To me this poem is pretty clearly a dig at the self justification you're talking about. He's saying "in the future I will make up some pithy aphorism about how my life is great now because I took a bold and purposeful choice, and only I will know that that is a big lie I tell to make myself look like a brave and clever person". It's relatable because we all do that.

Interesting interpretation, good analysis, and enjoyable video! One tiny nit: When you said "prescribe" did you mean to say "ascribe"?

Sad you didn't refer to the poet even once as Bobert Frost haha. Great video! :D

I never read the poem entirely, so thanks for this insight. Plus I like that suspicious brain illustration

I really enjoyed this take on the poem, literary interpretation is a very slippery slope at times and I think you did a very good job, especially at the end, conveying how open it is and how much of it is what you pull from it.

Really enjoyed this, thank you for sharing!!! Would love to see more videos of you breaking down text!!

For some reason, when I studied this poem in high school, I remember now that I wasn't exactly sure why the most common interpretation was so widely accepted. Now this video helps me understand why.

Maybe what makes a difference is that he made a choose and that's what he's speaking about? And not what choose he made or what reason he used to make it?

I've been a Robert Frost fan for a while. Even lived in some of the same cities he lived in in New England, and have been to his farm. Thank you for sharing this. Very elucidating.

So happy I found this! One thing that I really miss from being in English class is listening to someone break down a story or a poem to find the hidden meaning no matter if it’s right or wrong. Had to subscribe!

There's an assumption that most people make (including myself), that the outcome of the traveller choosing the path he did, lead to a positive end.

I was wrong, a 10 minute discussion you were able to quickly shoot and edit is great

My interpretation here: This poem is about the old age question of decisions. But not in a particularly bad view. This person just arrived at a fork on the road, one he clearly has never taken before seeing that they never seemingly never saw these paths. When you think about it, isn't life all about decisions? And anytime we do make decisions, we always end up wondering or at least speculating: what if I had taken the other option? what experiences would I have lived, if my choice was another? But to this person, no matter the path, both will be the less traveled road. When handling a new situation and having to choose which path you will take, you will never know how the road in fact going to look like on both sides. Yet, no matter which less traveled road, for good or for bad, to our speaker it made all the difference. The act of simply choosing a path and traveling through it, and seeing it as a new experience in your life is able to make a whole difference, for good or bad. There is no positive or negative implied here, just that in the end, it changed everything, and well, our decisions to change and shift our lives all the time. This is in the end just my interpretation: the state of conscious being, and the neverending new shifts that changes bring to our lives.

When was going through high school, it was boarding school, one far from my home country and far in the countryside. When this poem was taught in my English Class, I was extremely fascinated by it, like it resonated with me. I wrote it down on a paper and pasted it near my bed. Reading it at the start of the day, somehow, it gave me a strength to overcome my high school. For me it was a source of strength and perseverance. Hearing this now - made me smile of the days gone by - and how its made me the man I am today.

I literally just did this in class for English. The youtube algorithm is scary

I studied Robert Frost last year in high school, and then i start seeing "The Road Not Taken" everywhere *after* my exams zzz

I love your interpretation and your method of getting to it! "When it comes to analyzing literature a lot of us were taught that there's a right answer, and then when we escape the public school system... we swing to the other side of the spectrum and think that there are no right answers, and that any and every interpretation of a text is equally valid." I agree. As an English teacher I often have to guide discussions depending on the class they happen in because some groups get very puzzled if presented with many interpretations and I honestly feel that it's down to literacy. At that point it's helpful to actually have an anchor point around which to guide discussions rather than floating around in a sea of interpretations, since those students' minds haven't matured enough to be able to sift through all the different options. A more able group, however, would LOVE and thrive in this sea of interpretations and have in-depth debates about it. That's when the anchor point isn't as necessary and you can let the students go. The hope is that, eventually, the students which need the anchoring scaffold will be able to actually go ahead and dip their toes in the sea of possibilities ^_^

It also makes me think if he said the line "I took the one less travelled by" Just in the form of exaggeration of an adventure that wasn't there.

As a high schooler the poem just makes me more scared of everything. It's really unsettling. 🙂...

I think the meaning is that you need to make a decision and not get caught up in indecision between two equal choices.

I really like this interpretation! It aligns with why I find it so needling when people say "everything happens for a reason" or "you'll end up wherever you're meant to" or "when one door closes, another will open" and things like that. Life is a series of millions of choices with no real "right" or "wrong" decision, but sometimes even a small decision that seems fairly equal to another decision might lead you down a very different path. That doesn't make one better than the other! But there's no higher power or higher purpose dictating our life, it's our own choices and experiences and reactions. A lot of the time, there really isn't a "reason" for something happening other than a fairly arbitrary decision made by you or someone else. You aren't "meant to" have a particular life path, and opening doors is driven by... well, again, the decisions of yourself and those around you.

My interpretation is that whatever road was more or less traveled, doesn’t matter, it’s just to distinct the two. The speaker just reflects on the path he took and says it was the right one, because it got him to where he is now. And even if he still doesn’t know what life he would have had if he made the other decision, he is happy with the choice he made. The poem (for me) is about learning to live with the choices that led you to be who you currently are...