THE ROAD NOT TAKEN - A POEM BY ROBERT FROST - Dedicated to the Greek Elections of January 2015

'THE ROAD NOT TAKEN ' and the Greek Elections of January 2015

when a poem by Robert Frost draws the portrait of the nowadays European Community 

   Written in the 1920s, the poem 'The Road not Taken' is a poem about two roads and a man standing in front of them. Having spent my last months within the national elections fever and finding myself within the turmoil of all the predictions regarding the future of the Greek nation within the European community, I have come across this poem which has always appealed to me. 

    If I was offered the possibility to find a literary color to paint the present situation of the Greek nation and the Greek country nowadays, The Road not Taken would be this color. I am not a politician and I have never been involved in any kind of political activities other than participating in my country's elections. And the truth is that never before can I remember myself to have been so tremendously troubled than in the recent elections of January 2015. The reason is as simple as that. I found myself feeling like the man of Robert Frost's poem. Standing in front of two roads, I am looking at each one feeling incapable to predict my satisfaction on my choice. 

    But the poet has stood up and has let his voice speak loud and clear. The traveler of the poem stands before two roads and he seems not to have got the slightest idea on which road to pick so that he can go on with his journey. The whole procedure of looking for the right answer in himself, is depicted in the following stanzas of the poem. ‘And he looked down, one as far as I could / To where it bent in the undergrowth / Then took the other, as just as fair / And having perhaps the better claim…’ writes Frost in his second stanza.

   The reader witnesses the traveler’s dilemma for real. Both roads are so alike. They are similar so there is really no way to make the right or wrong choice. The reader gets the impression that one road must be chosen so one is chosen just by luck. Both roads opening their paths in front of the narrator seem equally worn, since ‘Though as for that, the passing there / Had worn them really about the same / And both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black.’So the narrator chooses one of the two roads appearing exactly the same and reaches his last years of life in the last stanza where he shares a kind of confession with his readers. ‘ 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.’

   So the narrator shares his personal truth. He will say that the road he chose was the less traveled by. This is something he will say with a sigh. Why? Because he really does not know whether or not he should have chosen another path. 

   It seems that Frost aims at raising the question which still remains unanswered. When people are asked to choose their paths, what is the most crucial factor affecting their choices? And the most important question lies in one’s choice is what would have happened differently if one had chosen something else than what he first chose.

   

  The narrator of the poem seems to feel puzzled and not be able to give an answer to this question. He probably wants to say that the journey of one’s life is in a way predestined by factors which are not and cannot be predestined by humans. There is this mystery in human life predefined by mysterious forces like fate and luck. There is even lots to be said in the field of how free one is to choose paths and routes in his / her life. According to the narrator there is really no need in feeling remorse for our choices, in feeling that if one path had been chosen differently things would have come out different.

   

The narrator seems to believe that either way the painful truth remains. No one can ever know for sure what his / her life would be like if chosen differently. It could be better or it could be worse. But there is always a sigh when looking back in life. There is this sigh as a means of defending against the possibility that one failed because he chose this particular path and not the other.

  

One way or the other the journey in life remains the same in terms of entailing equal difficulties, failures, and / or successes. This is what the journey in life is according to Frost.

Could this be the meaning of the Greeks' choice in these recent elections? Could this choice of theirs be their answer to the increasing troubling question on what Europe's future is when no free choices exist other than the imposed ones? Could it just be the expression of their grief since they have come to the realization that neither they nor the others equal members of their European team have realized that they have lost their energy trying to find the correct choice, the correct path without having spent even a fraction of a second on paving their common paths? 

Poetry may be the solution to drawing and painting the feelings. But actions following common wishes for common welfare and common drawing of paths is the solution to the dead- end of a trembling Europe who tries to balance on the non-balance of the increasing gap between the weakest and the most powerful ones .... maybe....