The Sorry Traveler, Sighing Speaker

Time is one of the important elements in the "meaning" of a piece of literature. It is especially delightful to examine it in Frost's poem, "The Road Not Taken."

The poem is a story--duh--about a traveler, the speaker, who had to take one of two similar paths and experiences "all the difference" made by such a necessary and subtle choice. The speaker talks from a time after the decision was made, but before "ages and ages hence." Obviously, our traveler is still traveling.

Contrary to the typical reading, the traveler holds the same feelings for the divergence in the past, present, and future. According to the typical superficial American individualist religious reading, the speaker had trouble choosing the right way, but having made the "righteous" choice it worked out wonderfully in the end . . . "made all the difference"--a phrase we usually use in praise of good choices. Like the typical reading, the traveler did not choose one path without some sorrow and knowledge of what the one not taken might hold.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

(emphasis mine)

According to the final stanza, the speaker will tell the story in years to come with a sigh--not with wailing, with anger, or with joyful exclamation--a mere sigh, of what we are not told. We have a steady-charactered speaker who was "sorry" when the decision had to be made, will sigh in the future when thinking on that decision, and knows currently that the decision made "all the difference," in joy or sorrow we are not told. This is not a vain celebration. The speaker does not think he/she was "right:" just knows that he/she is on a road that will never bring the same opportunity as the one left for the day that will never come. This is what happens to mortals in a universe with time. Some might be a little discontented.