The Importance of Choice

The central theme of "The Road Not Taken" revolves around the significance of human choice. Through its tone, language, and structure, the poem is able to offer multiple understandings of what it means to choose. The first interpretation of choice offered by the poem is that it is largely significant in determining how one's life will unfold. This reading is bolstered by the symbol and idea of the "road not taken" or of the uncommon choice. Here, the uncommon choice is the one that, the speaker imagines, has affected him many years down the line. When he says "I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference" (19-20), he attributes to this choice a weight and importance so large that he would remember it long after it occurred. This reading is one that often leads to readers interpreting...