That has made all the difference (draft)

Sitting in English class in middle school, looking over this poem, it’s always intrigued me.  Something about it always made me want to read it over and over again.  At first glance, there’s the obvious forest imagery, that always reminds me of my times camping, my time in boy scouts, and the friends I’ve made there, or of the times I went hiking, and times I came across my own two paths in the wood.

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;

               

Thinking about this poem, one of the major things it’s talking about, is it’s a huge metaphor about the choices we make.  There are many times where we have to make a choice, but either choice is just as appealing.  When we have those moments, we sit there and just look at both paths, and can’t decide, thinking we’ll regret it that we won’t be able to see the other path that we could have taken.  We sit there, trying to decide how we can decide which one is the best, and so we sit there thinking, and doing nothing.

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,

As life continues on, we have to make choices, and we cannot go back to these moments in time, and take another decision.  We’ve only got this one chance to make a decision, which can be hard, since we can only see so far, and our sight is really limited.  We can’t see around the bend, or through the trees themselves, we can’t see what’s lurking in the path.  But, we can move based on what we can see, and sometimes, we just need to pick a path, and move on, since either path might be just as good as the other.  There’s not always a good or a bad path. 

               

                                                And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized more and more about this poem.  For one thing, we all have so many choices that we have to make, some of them are less traveled, and some are so traveled, there’s hardly any undergrowth that can be seen, but as this poem states, it’s not always the most traveled of paths that make it appealing.  Sometimes, we need to discover, to have our own adventures, it’s not about conforming to others, but becoming your own person, and perhaps that’s why it’s made all the difference.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The poem seems really simple, yet it holds many ideas behind it.  Just like how nature seems simple, and is beautiful in its simplicity, yet in that simplicity, there is much thought, and there is usually much more going on than what can be seen.  Since, behind the two paths, there were many who were at the same crossroads, and both had been taken, which means that there are many stories that crossed at this same point, and came to different conclusions based on their experiences.  Although, in this case we can’t ask others for advice since we’re alone, but when we have our own choices, we can ask those who have followed one path or another, and we can find out which path seems to be the better one based on the experiences of others.

Growing up, going through school, I’ve come across many pieces of literature, many different poems, yet this one has always stuck with me.  It’s one that I think about from time to time, and sometimes I wonder why it has struck with me so.  On the one hand, it seems simple, and like it follows many standard things that make up a poem, for example rhyming, and the format it’s written in.  But then, I realized that the rhyming pattern is a little bit different than most, since it goes ABAAB, instead of ABAB, or ABBA, and has 5 lines, instead of the usual 4. They’re slight changes to the norm, but I think that made it all the more compelling to me, it seemed like any other poem, but then it made slight changes to make it something different.

This poem is a classic, and shows that something seemingly so simple, can be a masterpiece, and that poetry can draw in people from all walks of life.  It has a power that can relate to many different people, and mean a lot of different things.  It helps us to realize things about ourselves, and about life, and it really has made all the difference, at least for me.