"The Road Not Taken" In My Own Life
When I was a child, I had a friend named Henry; we were best friends, and nearly inseparable. One day after class, however, he told me that he had stolen the teacher's edition of our book from her while she was not looking; he had it in his backpack. He told me that, if we looked at it tonight, we could copy all the answers and get an A on our assignments for the rest of the class. I knew that Henry stealing the book was wrong, but I also knew that Henry would stop being my friend if I told our teacher about the theft. At that point, I knew I faced a hard problem that would change everything for me. It was my first real exposure to a problem that had no clear answer. Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" resonates with all who have faced a dilemma in their lives. This definitely resonates with me, as I had a seemingly impossible decision to face about Henry, one which tested my own resolve and forced me to make some hard choices.
Frost's character claimed he was "sorry he could not travel both and be one traveler"; apparently, he is the type of person who wants to have his cake and eat it too (695). I felt this way, as I wanted to keep my friend but still do the right thing. If it were up to me, I would have told the teacher, but in a way that Henry understood, and he would not resent me for it. However, I knew he would, and his friendship meant too much to me to make it an easy decision. Frost's character even entertains the notion for awhile that he can go back and head down both paths, keeping “the first for another day" (696). In my situation, doing that would have meant waiting to tell the teacher, holding onto my friendship with Henry a bit longer. However, I knew I could not live with myself, and the teacher would likely find out anyway before I had a chance to make the decision on my own. As a result, I knew this was a time-sensitive dilemma I had to resolve.
While both paths are said to be about as worn as the other, Frost's character goes on to state to himself (and to others, though admittedly with a sigh) that he did take the "one less traveled by" (696). I often feel this way, looking back; I think that most people would have not ratted on their friends and kept the book. At the very least, they would likely pretend not to know anything about it if they got caught. I know many people who would rather risk getting in trouble than jeopardizing their friendships, or who value the people close to them more than authority figures, like their parents and teachers. However, I knew that I could not live like that, which led me to the path that I ended up taking.
In the end, the road I took was to tell the teacher about the stolen textbook. The next day, she confronted Henry after class and asked for the book back. Henry never talked to me again; I'm sure the teacher didn't tell him it was me who told her, but I was the only other person who knew about it. It felt really bad to lose such a good friend; at the same time, I was able to live with myself, since I knew I did the right thing. I do indeed feel as though my choice did "make all the difference" (Frost, 696).
The decision itself changed my life in a lot of ways, most certainly for the better. I lost a friend in Henry, but I gained a lot of respect for myself. For one, I knew that I was able to make the right decision if I really needed to; this helped me feel more secure in myself as a good person. I reconciled the fact that Henry hated me now by remembering that Henry wasn't doing some very good things, and I would be a party to it if I let him go on. Furthermore, he would have gotten in worse trouble if he had kept the book from her even longer, and everyone in the class might have suffered from being blamed for it. With the belief that I made the right decision, I was able to assert myself more often, and simply believe in myself.
Missing that friendship with Henry is the biggest regret to come from that decision. It is most certainly something I will be looking back on "with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence" (Frost, 696). There will be (and are) moments when I wonder if Henry and I would still be as close as we were back then now, if I had kept my mouth shut about the textbook. I valued him greatly as a friend, and so the day of that decision often comes back to me, and I imagine what life would be like if Henry and I stayed friends. Keeping the textbook, or at least waiting until the fallout of the situation, might have led to a different result. I would have felt worse about myself, but at least I would keep my closest friend in the world.
In the end, I think the dilemma I faced might have been a bit clearer than Frost's character had to face in "The Road Not Taken," but it was still just as difficult to resolve. I knew that keeping the textbook would have been wrong, but I wanted to keep my friend; we were such big parts of each other's lives, and it did hurt to have that taken away from me. However, my decision made "all the difference," and I was able to move on from not having Henry as my friend. With this in mind, I feel very good having come out the other side of such an arduous choice to make.
Works Cited
Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” Literature and the Writing Process. Elizabeth McMahan,
Susan X. Day, and Robert Funk. 8th edition. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007.
695-696.
