Frost provides the answer to your question about setting
in the poem’s opening line: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” The setting is the
woods, in this case with paths strewn with yellow leaves. When the speaker looks
agonizingly at the two paths, telling us he is “sorry [he] could not travel both,” we
realize that the woods and, in particular, the roads, are symbols for choices in life.
This should be apparent from the simple fact that we COULD go back and travel a second
literal road. Like choices in life, the roads before the speaker are not clearly
visible. He looks as far as he can see “To where it bent in the undergrowth.”
Similarly, when we are planning choices in our future, we can only see the start of each
possible path and have no way of knowing where it will
lead.
The speaker is indecisive and looks to see which path
is more worn. That is, he wonders which choice in life more people have taken. He takes
the one that he at first thinks is “grassy and wanted wear,” even though he realizes
that the passing –the fork in the road—“had worn them really about the same.” No matter
how much he tries to puzzle out his decision, he can’t find a clue to help him make the
better choice.
When he says he “kept the first for another
day,” he realizes—as we do along with him—that sometimes we can go back in life to a
choice we had abandoned. But it is not likely. Our speaker goes on to say that
“knowing how way leads on to way / I doubted if I should ever come back.” Once we’ve
made some of our choices in life, it is often hard, even impossible, to go back and
start over. As the poem concludes, the speaker is in the future, telling his story
“with a sigh.” We always wonder if we made the right choice. The famous closing line,
stating that the road he did choose “has made all the difference” is ambiguous. He
can’t really know what the other choice would have meant, but he will always
wonder.
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