The Road Not Taken
I'm probably late to the party on this, but I've always had trouble making sense of the internal contradictions in Frost's The Road Not Taken. He says that the road he chose had "perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear", but then contradicts that with the disclaimer "though, as for that, the passing there had worn them really about the same." It wasn't until today's Dinosaur Comics that it occurred to me that we aren't actually intended to take the narrator seriously. At which point the poem becomes clearly a satire of people who make arbitrary decisions and then later in life invest those arbitrary decisions with heroic significance. Indeed, the choice may have made all the difference, but then the speaker should celebrate his good luck, not his rugged individualism.
Which seems like a good message for the folks in Tampa this week.
Which seems like a good message for the folks in Tampa this week.