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Comment by russellbeattie | Hacker News Reader

Pedantic, narrow-minded pinheads will always find a way to prove their superiority with ridiculous crap like this. "You're doing it wrong" is classic click-bait for a reason [1]. "You're using 'ironic' incorrectly! Oxford commas is the only correct punctuation! Everyone should use Tau instead of Pi!" Yada, yada, yada.

The sentiment of this poem is expressed extremely clearly, which is why it's so popular. We're not all idiots, illiterate or suckers. The last stanza clarifies and reinforces the rest of the poem. Any alternative interpretations of this poem are from 'smarter-than-thou' morons who want to show off how they are more educated and intelligent than you.

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/09/every...

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I appreciate your cynical anti-cynicism, but most people probably do misinterpret the poem. And they don't have to be idiots either.

Also, the last stanza, and specifically the last line states the opposite of the meaning. It does not "clarify" it. "And that has made all the difference." In actuality, there was no difference. So it's not clear, especially not if someone isn't paying attention to what they read. A lot of people don't pay attention to this sort of stuff, and again, it doesn't mean they're idiots or they did something wrong. I didn't get it the first couple of times I came across this poem.

But go on, anyone who tries to explain something commonly misunderstood is some kind of a jerk or whatever.

It's not exactly the opposite of the meaning... it's more that the last three lines are framed as how he will one day describe the choice he just made, even though he has already described that choice in a way that makes clear his future description is going to be largely BS.

Literally 20% of the lines of the poem are spent saying there is NO discernable difference in how much the two roads have been traveled. Another 10% are saying the roads both look great and he'd like to travel on each of them. Then the conclusion -- the only bit most people remember -- is explicitly said to be what he will say "ages and ages hence". There is zero indication that's what he actually thinks at the time the poem is written.

The argument in this article isn't some sophisticated take on the poem. It's just a straight literal reading of what the poem says. The only bit that's in any way fancy is recognizing that when the poet says he's going to say something (instead of just directly saying that something) you might have to think about why the poet is putting things in that very roundabout way.

In this case, we have Frosts words to lean on for a specific intent, and Frosts words to tell us that he himself personally experienced people misunderstanding it.

The last paragraph takes a step back to talk about how one interpretation, no matter the author's original intent, does not necessarily supersede the other. Basically, they are careful to point out that your interpretation of the poem is just as valid as any other.

The sentiment of this article is expressed extremely clearly... we're not all idiots, illiterate, or suckers...

> Any alternative interpretations of this poem are from 'smarter-than-thou' morons who want to show off how they are more educated and intelligent than you.

I'm not sure how you could get more narrow-minded and "smarter-than-thou" than this very statement.

So I've been reading this wrong the entire time?

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