Freedom and Restriction

The central conflict in the poem is between the idea of freedom (as symbolized by the road and the writer’s desire to set out on it) and the idea of restriction (as symbolized by the collar in the poem’s title). A religious life demands a high level of sacrifice. Even if these sacrifices are not difficult in and of themselves — and for the speaker, they often are — they still prevent a person from living their life the way they want to. The speaker finds these restrictions oppressive and frustrating and dramatizes those frustrations for the reader.

The poem expresses a powerful longing for the ability to live one’s life freely. He asserts that his “life and lines” are “free, free as the road” (4). This suggests that the ability to live completely freely, like a traveler without a home, is the speaker...