"The Road Not Taken" Taken Apart Quiz

Answer:

Robert Frost was born in 1874 in San Francisco but moved to Massachusetts when he was 11 after the death of his father. He became interested in poetry in high school and was co-valedictorian with his wife to be Elinor Miriam White whom he married in 1895. He spent time at both Dartmouth and Harvard but never received a formal degree.

His first poem was published in 1894 but little afterwards until they moved to England in 1912 where he was influenced by the numerous contemporary poets. He published two full length collections in the three years he was there and was established as a major poet in America, winning four Pulitzer prizes, from the 1920s until his death in 1963.

"The Road Not Taken" was published in "From The Poetry of Robert Frost" in 1916. This poetic masterpiece was actually written as a joke for his friend, fellow poet Edward Thomas. Apparently, whenever they would go for country walks Thomas was always indecisive about which way to go and would usually lament later that they should have taken the other way.

The focus of the poem for many readers is on the last verse, which appears to embolden the belief that if one is courageous and adventurous and dares to be different and travel an alternative path to others that they will fulfil all their dreams and aspirations and be able to look back in retrospect and believe that they made it all happen by one random choice.

The other three, however, do not support this idea. In fact, Frost is very clear in the first two verses that they are equally yellow and full of undergrowth and really had been both trodden on much the same. His indecision lay not in which road was better, but in the fact that he wanted to travel them both.

The third verse is a bit more melancholy, as he chooses and then says he will keep the other for another day thus enabling him to have both but, even as he says it, he turns around in the next line and admits he probably never will.

Because the poem was written in 1916, it can speculated that this isn't just about knowing that one rarely does get that second chance, but also about the fact that WWI had been raging in Europe for two years. US involvement was still a year away, but reality was that many young men would never come back and have a second chance at anything. His friend, Thomas, did die in France a few months after its publication.

The last verse also talks of looking back with a sigh, which can either signify content or regret; many readers assume that the 'difference' is good while it actually doesn't say this anywhere. It could have been the wrong choice that made his life worse, and the other road may have given him the better life.

In truth the roads were equally traveled and are basically interchangeable, his choice is made on pure impulse and the real message is in us assigning meaning to things that have happened in our past, to change something negligible into an intentional triumphant choice, or to place blame for things we did not do onto choices that were made in the past and thus escape responsibility for them.

This is all obviously one interpretation of the poem. There is no right or wrong when looking at works of literature. The whole point is to provoke thought, imagination and discussion.