The Road Not Taken

Study Guide

Literary Devices

Structure

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Literary Devices Structure

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a poem about making choices, Frost modeled “The Road Not Taken” on the logical structure of decision-making processes. Every decision-making process begins simply by understanding what decision is to be made. The second step involves discerning what the available options are. The third step consists of critically comparing the available options. The final step entails speculating on the consequences of making one decision over another. The speaker works through each of these stages over the course of the poem. In the first stanza, they describe the situation of two diverging paths. Then, in the second stanza, they describe the nature of the two paths available to them. Next, they reflect on how the paths look essentially the same, and on how this fact makes the decision more difficult since the outcomes are not predictable, and the decision isn’t easily reversible. Finally, they speculate on how their future self might look back on their decision. Although the four steps of the decision-making process generally align with the poem’s four stanzas, the overlap isn’t perfect, suggesting that no such process is neat and tidy. Nor can logic guarantee a positive outcome, regardless of how rational it may be.

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