Maggie's Farm

 “Most readers consider ‘The Road Not Taken’ to be a paean to triumphant self-assertion…but the literal meaning of the poem’s own lines seem completely at odds with this interpretation.” Orr describes how Frost’s popularity has made him exist on two parallel but separate levels: one, the corncob bard of Yankee wisdom who appears on t-shirts and mugs: the other, the critic’s darling who is “bleak, dark, complex, and manipulative.” The latter, it should be affirmed, is the accurate reading of Frost. As Orr (and probably your college English professor) explains, “The Road Not Taken” has nothing to do with inspiration and stick-to-it-iveness; rather it’s a melancholic exhalation at the futility of choice, a dirge about enduring in the face of meaninglessness. If you read Frost for the snow, but don’t feel the cold, then you’re not really reading Frost. Furthermore, I’d argue that Frost’s vision isn’t just contrary to the popular misconception of him, but that as an American poet he deserves to be categorized as among those with the darkest of visions, not because of those demonic images he played with in his freshman effort, but because he abandoned such ghouls and gremlins in genuflection before the actual hardness of this world.