The Ambiguity of the Impact of Life Choices By Stacy Tohar
In the Road Not Taken by Robert Frost the reader is left with ambiguity about the personal impact on the traveler of choosing one road over the other, and therefore ambiguity about the impact on a person from making one life choice to the exclusion of another, as this poem is of course a poem about life choices. The definition of the word ambiguity is doubtfulness or uncertainty of meaning or intention.It is unclear whether the subject of the poem, the traveler, feels contentment, regret, or both about his choice of roads. However, from the poem’s conclusion, it appears that the author intended that the ambiguity remain without resolution, just as is often the case with life choices and the impact of those choices. In the Road Not Taken, the traveler stands at a fork in the road and must choose one road over the other. Of course, this is a metaphorical fork, symbolizing life choices and paths. Knowing that he must choose one road over the other, the traveler attempts to look as far down the way as possible in an attempt to see where each road will take him. This is as in life, where we must attempt to visualize the impact of choosing one life choice over another. However, as with life choices, the traveler cannot see the consequences of one choice over the other with any certainty: “And looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth.”(4-5). The traveler can only see that one road is more heavily traveled, and the other unworn, which is symbolic of life choices that are similar to that which the majority of people choose, or life choices that are rarer.
As he weighed the impact of each different road, the traveler tries to console himself with the vision that he can always return and take the other path at some point: “Oh, I kept the first for another day!” (13) However, he immediately realizes the unlikelihood of that: “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.” (14-15) This is a recognition that, in the case of some grand decisions in our lives, there is little likelihood that we will have an opportunity to make the choice again, and must instead live with the choice we have made.
At this point in the poem, the traveler sets out the ambiguity of the impact of his choice: “I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence”(16-17) It is the word “sigh” in this passage that sets out the ambiguity. The word “sigh” has many possible meanings, some positive and some negative. The positive meanings in large part are associated with contentment. In the metaphorical context of this poem, that means personal contentment in one’s life choices. The negative meanings associated with the word “sigh” are in large part related to regret. In the metaphorical context of this poem, that means regret about one’s life choices. The word “sigh” could also connote all or many of the meanings, both positive and negative, all mixed up together. And, in the metaphorical context of this poem, that means of course that it is possible to feel both contentment and regret, and other related emotions, all at the same time, or at varying different times, about one’s life choices. The poem does not give any hint as to whether the word “sigh” is used in the sense of contentment, regret or a combination of the two. Instead, the author only explains that the choice of roads “has made all the difference.” Again, in the metaphorical sense of this poem, that means that one’s life choices can profoundly impact on the life one leads. There is no explanation however as to whether that impact is in any way positive or negative. It appears that this ambiguity, created by the apparent deliberate use of the ambiguous word “sigh,” is intended to explain to the reader that the impact of one’s life choices over other possibilities will always remain ambiguous. If the author had intended otherwise, he would have explained the “difference” the choice made, positive or negative. He did not do so. Instead, the author ensured that the reader understand that it is virtually impossible to ever know the impact of one’s life choices, as it is impossible to live two choices and then compare them. As a result, what is left is ambiguity, involving some contentment likely, some regret (for that which we will never experience or know), and likely all of these emotions at the same time, or at varying times in our lives.