Robert Frost Conformity

In “The Road Not Taken”, Robert Frost puts forth the choices in life in which we are all dealt. Using these choices, Frost makes it seem as if the poem is a triumphant victory over the controlling forces of our society. Frost cleverly uses this as a literary effect to highlight the deception within our society. This is yet another tragic case of the overwhelming power of conformity in our society, as the speaker is oblivious to the fact that he has been deceived. Frost uses the poem to comment on the tragic nature of the society in which we live. You may try to distinguish yourself from everyone else, but in your attempt to do so, you are being duped yourself into following another pre-determined path. With “The Road Not Taken”, Frost, using

Society greets our innocence with pre-determined choices, beating us into a product of its choosing. In this case, does it really matter the speaker chose the road that not as many people traveled down? The speaker still traveled down a distinct road, not going where he chose, but where the road chose. Pressured to choose a pre-determined road whose destination was made by those far before him, the speaker falls into tactic society uses to control us all. Society subtly uses this tactic to make us consistently compromise our true nature and freedom of choice. Frost ultimately says that self-actualization, to a level in which you are a free-thinking individual who is able to successfully see through social conformity, is near impossible. Frost touches on this, stating, with the speaker, “I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence”. With this statement, Frost is touching on an aspect of the Circle Theory. This theory states that societal conformity is so strong and deceptive, that we, as animals, have and will continue to experience the same core problems over and over again. These problems are perceived to go in a continuous circle, for eternity, with us never fully achieving self-actualization in order to change anything. The speaker states, “I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”, in the last two lines of the poem. Taking into consideration

This is too apparent to be a simple error, as Frost was using this to demonstrate a point and support his message. The very way in which the reader views the title is the exact same way in which the speaker originally viewed the road. The reader, seeing the title, will come up with a pre-conceived notion that the speaker subscribed to the road in which no one else had ever traveled. Consequently, this will lead to the reader developing their overall interpretation around that title. This parallels the same situation observed in the poem, as the speaker is deceived and manipulated into perceiving the two roads as something they are not. This is seen with the speaker believing one road to be traveled and the other not. Later, the speaker will come to the heartbreaking realization that they are both constructs of his society. Thus, the structure for this poem is, in essence, a metaphor for life. For example, in life, we all live for or by something, only to come to the haunting realization that that something is not what it seems to be. In reality, that something is actually being used to control us. In a way, Frost was using this poem as a darkly comedic literary tool, epically trolling the millions upon millions of individuals who read the poem. The aspect of society in which Frost is critiquing is explicitly the aspect of society that has