Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”: Graduation, Privilege, and Our Meta-Narratives

The narrator tells us that he knows the path he took was a conscious and arbitrary choice. He knows that now. But he tells us that in the future he will have constructed a meta-narrative for himself. He will have reframed the story so many times in his head that he will come to believe it himself. It will be a story of how he pulled himself up by his bootstraps, leaned into the challenge, and took the hardest path. He will frame the story as a triumphant victory. He will tell us that unless he personally had made the choice he did, he would not be the success that he is today. He will title his memoir Hard Choices.

Those last three lines that we know so well, then, are not an inspirational slogan to share with graduates. They are themselves the meta-narrative, the untrue story that the narrator will come to convince himself is true. Choices that we make, then, are much more ambiguous than the common understanding of this poem would lead us to believe. We also have far less control over our choices than we might think. And our meta-narratives often deceive us as to way external circumstances might influence our ultimate standing (such as what paths lie before us to choose from in the first place).

Relating Frost’s Poem to Privilege

Recently, I read a short graphic story by Toby Morris called “On a Plate” that illustrates well how this applies to the American Dream and the issue of privilege. The graphic story helpfully eliminates the issue of race from the discussion (or at least the racial duality we perceive in the United States)—just for the purposes of the comparison. This enables us to get at the relevant issues of privilege. By placing its discussion outside racial dualities, we are able to see how the available paths before a person greatly affect where they end up arriving. This is not to say that a person cannot find another path, but it certainly speaks to the comparative difficulty of doing so.

Likewise, the graphic story speaks well to the misplaced pride that those born into privilege (whether of race or class or religion or gender) often have in their high standing. The privileged are like Frost’s narrator, standing at the divergence of two (fairly) equally good paths. They also reflect his reframing of the meta-narrative. No, they assure us! It is not that they had two equally good paths. That is not how they remember the story at all! Rather, they had a well-traveled path (the one the poor and marginalized took) and a less-traveled road (the one they courageously took). If the poor and marginalized had been willing to work hard and take the less-traveled road like the narrator did, they would have succeeded as well. Success comes to the hard worker; poverty comes to those who don’t try.

Do you see how much Frost can teach us in our polarized times? We all must do the best we can with the cards we are dealt, yes, but we are foolish if we think that we are all dealt the same cards. Like Father Greg Boyle, we ought to think of those who do not have such good paths to choose from. As he says, we ought to “stand in awe of what the poor have to bear instead of in judgment of how they bear it.” We must, likewise, try not to revise our own history. We must try not to form our own meta-narrative. We must live with a spirit of thanksgiving (not shame) for the privileges we have been given and then think of how we might use those privileges for more than prideful self-congratulation. We must think of how we might use those privileges to serve those who were born without them, through no fault of their own.

Graduation and Daring to Choose

Frost can also teach us much in this month of graduation, ends, and beginnings. For graduates who look into the future, struggling to choose a path, there is comfort in knowing that there is not always a perfect path to follow. We must simply look at the options, acknowledge that they are fairly equivalent (at least sometimes), and be willing to make a choice. Being alive means sometimes making difficult, even ambiguous, choices. It means daring (as Martin Luther told his young, conflicted protégé) to “sin boldly.” It means daring to direct your life in some direction, even if it won’t be perfect. That is how you contribute to the world. That is how you begin to make a difference in one small corner of the planet. Choose something. Do something. Say “yes” to one thing and “no” to the other things. It may not mean you have chosen the perfect plan, but it certainly does take courage to dare to choose one of the imperfect paths that life places before you.

When you think about it that way, perhaps Frost’s often-misunderstood poem has a lot of inspiration for us after all.

It’s just not the inspiration we thought it offered at first glance.

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