as if it has been traveled many times before and is the safer, easier route to continue down. However, the other road does not like it has been used frequently and may be more problematic to travel on. He ends up selecting the path less traveled by, or the road that did not look as convenient, to continue his journey. He/she states that by selecting this path, it has "made all the difference." You could also interpret that as a theme. Not only is the theme about choice, but it about praising the choice of the nonconformist, someone who goes outside the box to think, a renegade or risk taker. Think of the saying, "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." If this person selected the easy path, they would not have experienced any challenges, yet by choosing the path less traveled they are inviting obstacles and unforeseen adventure, which may make them stronger in character.

"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost allows readers to contemplate the decisions they make. Some decisions are life-changing and others are more a matter of preference and do not change lives. However, for some, all decisions are difficult to make and there is always a possibility that, regardless of the choice made, the decision may turn out to be the wrong decision. Therefore, the main theme is about making choices.

In his poem, Frost is lamenting or complaining about this problem, not as it relates to himself but with regard to how others perceive (observe) it. The narrator would like to travel on both paths and is disappointed that he has to choose at all. He is conflicted or at odds with himself as he looks along one path and then chooses the other, observing that "it was grassy and wanted wear." However, he admits that there is probably little difference, them being "about the same." And so the theme is extended to include the effects of choices.

In this instance, the narrator worries more about the choice he does not make rather than making the most of the one he has chosen. Understanding that the theme is about choices also allows the reader to contemplate or consider expectations. The narrator can be happy about having taken "the one less traveled" and be confident that "that has made all the difference" or he can be troubled by his choice and the "difference" that that will make to his future in a potentially negative or undesirable way. Therefore the theme also includes elements relating to the consequences of risk-taking or avoiding risk. 

Most people read “The Road Not Taken” as a call to liberal individualism and a celebration of personal autonomy. Critics claim the poem shares in the spirit of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance,” or Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”: works whose narrators find fulfillment and happiness in non-conformity. This read seems to be supported by the poem’s famous final verses: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.”

Frost himself warned against this simplistic interpretation, noting in his 1925 letter to Crystine Yates that:  “You have to be careful about that one; it’s a tricky poem – very tricky.”

Indeed, a close read reveals that the theme of the poem isn’t individualism and self-reliance. Rather the poem speaks to the ironic nature of all our decision-making: we must choose, yet we have no knowledge of the results our choices will bring. We make our decision with no foreknowledge of what fortune or misfortune they will bring.

We will only know the meaning of our decisions after we’ve already made them. The poem’s narrator admits as much: “I shall be telling this with a sigh, / somewhere ages and ages hence. / Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- / I took the one less traveled by, / and that has made all the difference.”  The narrator, speaking in the present, admits that he doesn’t know what difference it made because he hasn’t lived out the consequences of that choice. He only muses that in the future he will look back on this moment, determining its meaning and significance only after living out its results.

In "The Road Not Taken," there is a theme that involves choices. The speaker comes to two roads and has to make a choice. As the title would reflect, the speaker is still thinking about the road he did not take. The road is a reference to the journey of life. The speaker is on a journey and when he comes to a fork in the road, he has to make a decision as to which road he will travel. Looking back, the speaker is wondering what the road he did not take may have held for him.   

This poem can be interpreted to be a reflection about a choice one has made in life. The speaker may even regret that he did not take the other road for he tells it with a sigh:

I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:

The speaker realizes how "way leads on to way" and that he will probably never return this way again. The speaker sighs and states that he is "sorry [he] could not travel both" roads. There is a sense of sadness at not being able to take both roads. But life is about choices. Sometimes the choices are difficult. The speaker realizes that he may one day regret the choice he has made. Truly, the poem is about the other road, the road not taken.

Ultimately, the speaker claims the road he did take has made all the difference. In this line, the reader can only hope that the difference made is for the better.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference. 

The theme of this poem centers around choices, and which ones bring us the fullest life as human beings.

In "The Road Not Taken," we see someone in the woods at the fork in the road...pondering which way would be the better one to travel.

The one path is one he has traveled before...so it would be safe, and easy to travel. The other path is unknown, and will be scary to travel because there will be more obstales in the way. The author chooses to take "the road less traveled", and he concludes that this has made "all the difference."

We assume then, that the moral or theme of the poem is that choosing individuality...stepping out of the comfort zone and being a nonconformist...following ones own heart and dreams...is what makes life full and rich.

I'm pretty sure I answered a question like this before, but I can't find it, so here goes.

This poem has often been read as story of a "decision point" in a person's life.  The poem states that the person "took the road less traveled by," but the facts of the poem belie that statement:

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

If they are worn about the same, then, the point isn't that one was "less travelled," but rather that, because the traveller is just one person, he cannot take both, so s/he must make a choice.  That choice will determine/influence everything s/he does for the rest of their lives.  We can tell ourselves that we will come back some day to try the other path,

Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back

but it's not likely to happen.

So all our choices are important.  We may look back with a sigh some day, not of sadness, but simple of fact.  We have choices; we make choices; and our life flows from these.

Readers often misinterpret "The Road Not Taken," and they therefore identify themes that are not well-supported by the details of the poem. One main theme in "The Road Not Taken" centers around humanity's sense of pride.

Although the speaker in this poem looks back upon the choices he's made in his life with a sense of self-satisfaction, there are details throughout the poem that indicate he has recreated the details of his life to fit with a particular view he has of himself. Recall that early in the poem, those two roads (indicating his choices) were not all that different: They "equally lay" before him, both covered in leaves. The amount of travel had worn both roads "really about the same." Both roads are equally untraveled at the time the speaker makes his choice, and he thus cannot determine which might be the easier or more difficult path.

Yet in retrospect, the speaker knows he will want to believe that he has chosen the road "less traveled by" and that these difficult choices down metaphorically less traveled roads have made all the difference in his life. This final stanza even begins with a sharp change in tone and diction, the choices reflecting the language of fairy tales. "Somewhere ages and ages hence" is reminiscent of "Once upon a time, a long, long time ago..." This shift in diction points to the fantasy that the speaker has created, borne out of his need to feel contentment with his own life's choices.

The speaker's thoughts in this poem suggest that one's memories are not always an honest reflection of one's personal choices or their impact. The poem suggests that our recollections are subjective and are shaped by narratives about ourselves that we wish to believe in.

The precise meaning of “The Road Not Taken” has been contested ever since it was written over a hundred years ago. But in thematic terms, it is difficult to argue against its being primarily concerned with the essential role that choice plays in our lives.

In existential terms, to be human is to choose. Try as we might, we cannot avoid making choices of one sort or another right throughout the course of our lives. And the speaker in Frost's poem is undoubtedly aware of this. Confronted by two divergent paths in a wood, he has made the fateful decision to choose the road less traveled. He's certain that, in years to come, when he looks back on this decision, he will realize that it “made all the difference."

Precisely how this decision will make all the difference is unclear; but then, one should bear in mind that this is a future event we're talking about here, and so the speaker himself doesn't yet know what significance it will have. It's possible that the speaker will not be fully honest in the future when he reflects on this moment. Perhaps the speaker's choice of path won't have actually made much difference in his life—indeed, it doesn't seem likely that such a small decision would. From this perspective, the speaker's certainty that his choice will have significance perhaps is a commentary about how humans wish to ascribe meaning and significance to their decisions.

The main theme of “The Road Not Taken” is that we want to believe that our choices are unique or brave and that they make a major impact on the course our lives take, though neither is really true.

The speaker indicates, in many ways, that the two roads with which he is confronted have been traveled about an equal number of times: in short, there is no “road less traveled.” He describes the roads as being somewhat different in aesthetics and appearance, but he notes that “the passing there / Had worn them really about the same” (lines 9–10). In other words, the roads have been worn down “about the same” amount by the feet of those people who have chosen and traveled them.

Moreover, he says that both “equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black” (12). So, no one appears to have traveled either road that morning, because their shoes would have left dirt or mud on the leaves that had fallen. For these reasons, we can surmise that the roads have been traveled approximately an equal number of times by an equal number of people.

Therefore, when the speaker says that he will tell this story “Somewhere ages and ages hence,” he admits that he will be saying something that is not true when he says that he “took the [road] less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference” (19–20).

Why would he lie? Perhaps because he wants to believe that this is true, that he was unique or individual and that his choice made a big difference in his life’s path. Perhaps because he knows that this is what his audience—maybe future children or grandchildren—will want to hear. Perhaps because he knows that human beings have a tendency to tell stories in such a way that it makes them look better or stronger than they really are. Regardless of the rationale, his story will be just that: a story.

The theme is choice; the narrator must make a decision. He can't stand there and vacillate forever, but needs to keep moving forward. He looks at both paths and decides that he will make a decision:

And looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;(Frost, "The Road Not Taken," bartleby.com)

Because he is only one man, he can't have the best of both worlds. Choice means exactly that: a choice between two options, without the ability to play both sides against the middle and come out on top. The narrator makes his decision and walks into the future, not knowing how his choice will affect his life.

The setting of the poem is a symbol; the narrator stands at the fork of a path in a yellow wood, looking at two options to choose from in his life. He can't take both options, only one, and so tries to figure out which will be the better choice. Knowing only what he knows at that moment, he make the choice and walks down the "less traveled" path, taking the option that fewer people take in life. The surrounding woods are life itself, continuing and more vast than any one person can understand.

Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" seems to intertwine both theme and setting. The poem's opening line establishes the setting as a "yellow wood" and indicates the presence of a traveler who is standing at a place where "Two roads" diverge into these woods.

The remainder of the poem deals with the traveler's observations about each of the various paths and how the traveler reaches the conclusion of which path to take.

Thus, I would say, that in Frost's poem the setting becomes the theme: "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood". Like Frost's traveler, we frequently come to points in our lives where we are faced with two paths from which we must choose (two colleges, two jobs, two cities, two friends, two love interests). Choices like these should bring us back to Frost's poem for further reflection.

One way to tackle this poem is to think about your own life and consider a choice that you made that marked a real turning point in your life and the way it was going. It might have been something simple or something big, for example if could have been trying out for a sports team, standing up for a friend or a job choice. However, now, because of that choice, your life has gone in a completely different direction as a result. Go back to the moment when you made the choice, and imagine that you made a different one instead. How would your life be different now? What would you be doing?

This poem is symbolically about these kind of decisions, as the persona of the poem takes a walk in a wood and is confronted with this kind of choice:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both...

This poet has to make such a decision, chooses one, with the intention of going back and taking the other, however he admits that:

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

This choice therefore captures the theme of the poem which could be said to be contradictions. A particular choice you once made might have improved your life in some ways but made it worse in others. Was it a good choice or a bad one? It was both - and it was neither. Yet the last stanza makes it clear that this relatively simple choice is one that the persona knows will haunt him in his later life as he thinks what his life would be like if he had taken the other path:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

In this poem therefore the roads and the choice that the poet needs to make stand as symbols for the choices we need to make in life. The last line of the poem recognises how even the simplest of choices can have a massive impact on the course of our lives, and the last stanza makes it clear the way that these life choices can haunt us as we consider what would have happened if we had taken another path.

Mainly, the poem is about the choices we make in life and how these choices affect our lives. The speaker in the poem comes upon two separate roads and must choose which one to go down. At first, he thinks one road is preferable over the other, but then he decides they are pretty much the same. Since he can only choose one road, he says he will return one day and go down the other road later on. The speaker, with sadness and regret, considers what he will think of the choice he made in the future. He feels by choosing the "road less traveled," he will regret his choice. He will then spend the rest of his life wondering what would have been if he had chosen the other road. Another theme could be the regret we feel as a result of our poor choices in life. Unless we're able to go down both roads, we'll never know what might have been.