The Road Not Taken
A lesson in why context matters in design and research
A famous poem says the following:
Two roads diverged in a wood. and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The line is from The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. You may have seen it printed on a calendar, graduation invitation, a t-shirt in a travel gift shop, or embroidered and framed at your grandma’s house. It has inspired the masses. It serves as a slogan for trying new things and accepting challenges. Except that poem isn’t really about what most people think it is about.
A few years ago I purchased a book of Robert Frost poetry. The Road Not Taken was one of the first poems I read in the book. I was familiar with the famous stanza mentioned above — it was printed on the back of the book. When I read the whole poem, The Road Not Taken became one of my favorite poems. This is not because of the famous line, or the poem as a whole, but because of the lesson reading it taught me about the importance of context.
So we’re going to analyze this poem. This might feel a little bit like high school english, but I think your time will be well spent. Rather than isolate a single stanza, let’s look at the entire poem to better understand its meaning. Here is the first stanza:
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;
A person arrives at a fork in the road. He stands there for a while and looks down one of the roads.
Then 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,
Then he looks down the other path. Note how it is described as being “just as fair.” Then he goes on to describe how it was more grassy and wanted wear, but digresses admitting that they were both “really about the same.” Essentially, both of these roads are the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
The fact that these two paths are about the same is further emphasized here. So far this is a very different story than the familiar stanza isolated by itself. Then, he makes his choice and takes the second path – knowing that he can go back another day and do the other, but realizing that will likely never happen.
Then comes the famous part:
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.
Do you see it? This is not a poem about taking new and adventurous paths. Taking the path less traveled is in fact a lie. In context of the entire poem, The Road Not Taken appears to say that we have a tendency as people to embellish the past and make our choices seems more grand and noble than they actually are. By better understanding the full context around an idea, the truth of an idea becomes more apparent.
But that is not the full story. There is more context to consider.
Prior to this poem being written, Frost and his friend Edward Thomas, another poet, would frequently go on walks together. On their walks they would frequently come to forks in the road, requiring that they pick a path to go down. Thomas often expressed regret for taking the wrong path.
To prove a point, and poke a little fun at his friend, Frost decided to help his friend out. He wrote a poem and sent a draft to Thomas. Essentially this poem is a wise joke to a friend about just picking a path and not looking back. Contrast that with the generally misunderstood meaning that you should take the road less traveled.
Really Frost is saying just pick a road.
Over the years the poem has taken on an ironic meaning by parts of the poem being taken out of context and passed along to others. We live in a society where opinions are made by reading Tweets and news stories are taken out of context, spliced up, and spread across the internet.
As a designer I like this poem because it is a good reminder to me to try and understand the whole picture. For the sake of ease there is a temptation to look at data, research, and feedback at face value. But really, things aren’t often what they first appear to be and sometimes things take on new meanings that we never intended.
If we want to design well, it is vital that we make the effort to understand the context around the problems we are trying to solve and realize that our solutions may inevitably take on new meanings.
I’m Scott Raney. I’m a designer that believes design is thinking through making. At the core of making things that make humans happy are happy humans making things.
Further Reading
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/09/robert-frost-poem-killed-friend/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSxjxhrwg5s
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken
