Could a falsely remembered road be marked as less traveled by a prank?

Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.

Source: Jakec, Wikimedia Commons, cropped, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0

Two roads diverge in the yellow forest,
And sorry I couldn’t travel to both.
And be a traveler, for a long time I stood
And I looked down as far as I could.
To a bend in the undergrowth.

One of the most famous poems ever written, “The Road Not Taken” by Poet Laureate Robert Frost, begins with a choice. At the fork in the road, which route does the traveler take through the forest?

Then the other equally received it as fair,
And you probably have a better argument.
I wanted to wear it because it looked grassy…
Although it passes through there
I was actually wearing them the same way,

Although this poem is widely recognized as a metaphor for choosing a direction in life, pursuing one path that determines the unknown future a person follows while forever abandoning other opportunities; It is also one of the most misread, misunderstood and misremembered poems in the world (Baroncini Mor, 2013; Oh, 2015). First, not everyone can even get the title right. This isn’t “The Road Les Traveled” (Bromley, 2016; Orr, 2015), but as it turns out, this may be an apt meta-misunderstanding about a misunderstanding.

And that morning they both lay the same way
Not a single leaf turned black.
Oh, I saved the first one for another day!
Still, I know that the road follows the road,
I wondered if I should come back.

People may remember the beginning and end of a poem better than they remember the middle of the poem. This is a demonstration of classic poetry. serial position effect It is about how we encode information (Ebbinghaus, 1913). The fourth and final stanza of the poem ends with the three lines that are most cited in songs, blogs, newspaper columns, commencement speeches, and the occasional psychology magazine article (Shay, 2013; Tooms & Boske , 2010).

I say that with a sigh
It’s been around for ages somewhere, and therefore:
Two roads diverged in the forest, and I…
I rode on the side where not many people were passing.
And that made a big difference.

If the part about the less traveled person leaves such a strong impression and is a motto of misfits and the pursuit of challenge, why isn’t that actually the title? Because this poem, as its name suggests, is a meditation on the path not taken. The second stanza refers to one road as “just as fair” as the other, and explicitly states that it was “actually almost as equally worn by passing through it.” Despite what I hope the author of this poem will say with a sigh later in life, neither path is visibly better or easier than the other. This poem is not only about the road less traveled; no Among them, the road less traveled – at least not outside the scope of the speaker’s predictions. Simple choice similarity presents speakers with problems such as: Clash of approacheseach option is equally attractive (Lewin, 1931). The more important the choice, the more stressful Collisions are likely to occur.

Frost wrote the song about the man’s indecisive personality to poke fun at his friend Edward Thomas, by playing up his “mischievous, jokey, sarcastic, sometimes cynical” side ( Glenn, 2001). The point-of-view character agonizes over a simple choice, as if it were inconceivably important. As if The narrator expects that every small decision, whether or not he actually makes it, can have life-altering consequences. If two equivalent roads each take travelers where they need to go that day, what difference does that decision make?

Caney Fork Trail, White County, Tennessee.

Source: BrineStans, Wikimedia Commons. Shared under CC BY 3.0

Social psychologists may explain the anticipated deception and self-deception As for the old culprit, cognitive dissonance (Caldwell & Anderson, 2020). One of the latest posts on this blog (“Does cognitive dissonance cause or contradict voter remorse?”) Explore how people deal with feelings of buyer remorse and remorse. consumer behavioror when it is too late to change other decisions. Leon Festinger(1957) cognitive dissonance theory Among other things, we propose that people will reinterpret the motives and reasons for their actions in order to feel satisfied with their actions and avoid stress over mistakes. In an example of irony in “The Road Not Taken,” the speaker expects to deceive and self-deceive in order to alleviate the stress placed on him by his own excessive worry.

Wiscombe Wood, Southleigh, England.

Source: David Smith, Wikimedia Commons. Shared under CC BY-SA 2.0