Which statement best describes how the speaker's thoughts in lines 9-12 affect the
meaning of the poem?
a. the speaker admits the roads are really the same, meaning he does not take the
road less traveled but wants his choice to seem like it matters.
the speaker admits the two roads are really the same, indicating that he will
grow confused with age and forget his past choices.
the speaker thinks both roads are actually heavily traveled, meaning that in the
end both choices would have led to full lives.
the speaker thinks he took the road less traveled, but is not sure if it has made
any difference in his life.
b.

We can safely assume this question is about the poem "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. The full poem is as follows:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And 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,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

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.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

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.

A. The speaker admits the roads are really the same, meaning he does not take the  road less traveled but wants his choice to seem like it matters.

Explanation:

The lines we must use for analysis here are at the end of the second stanza and beginning of the third one. However, it will help us greatly to take the poem as a whole into consideration. One of the very first things we need to understand about this poem is that it is ambiguous, as if the speaker is trying to confuse readers. At first, he claims that the road which caught his eye "was grassy and wanted wear", as if it had not been taken, as if no one had walked on it enough to prevent grass from growing.

However, right after describing the road in that manner, the speaker admits both roads are basically the same. They have both been taken equally. Those are the lines we were asked to use:

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.

Yet, in the final stanza of the poem, the speaker says that in the future, when he is old, he will claim to have chosen to road less traveled by. As we can see, that won't be truth. He told us the roads had been worn just the same. We can assume, then, the speaker wants to feel as if he made an interesting choice, as if he took a chance, risked something. He will see the road in the future not for what it really was, but for what it means to him.

ichabod crane is a fictional character and the protagonist in washington irving's short story, "the legend of sleepy hollow", first published in 1820. in popular culture, this story is sometimes retitled as "the headless horseman."