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According to the speaker, what has "made all the difference" (line 20)?

In the lines immediately preceding the final one, the speaker says,



"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by,"



It is this -- the idea that the narrator took the road that fewer people had taken -- that makes all the difference in his life (lines 18-19).  However, this is a lie that he is planning to tell because there is no road "less traveled" in the poem; the narrator has already said so.  He'd described the second road as "just as fair" as the first (6).  Further, he'd said that



"the passing there / Had worn them really about the same" (9-10).  



Therefore, the roads are pretty much the same, despite the fact that one is grassier than the other.  In fact, the same number of people had passed down each one, wearing each road about the same as the other.  Finally, the roads "equally lay" that morning (11).  Thus, when the narrator plans to tell people that taking the road less traveled has made a difference in his life, he plans to lie.  He wants to believe, as we all do, that we can and do make unique choices, choices that make a big difference in the courses our lives take, but such a belief is ultimately a fiction.

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