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A Poem by Robert Frost (1874-1963) A Study Guide cummings@cummingsstudyguides.net |
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Study
Guide Prepared by Michael J. Cummings...©
2005
Type
of Work and Year of Publication
"The Road Not Taken" is a lyric poem with four stanzas of five lines each. (A lyric poem presents the feelings and emotions of the poet rather than telling a story or presenting a witty observation.) The language is simple enough for a child to read, but the meaning is complex enough to foster scholarly debates and long essays. Henry Holt and Company published the poem in 1916 in a collection entitled Mountain Interval, Frost's first book printed in the United States. He had previously published two books in England. Setting and Background Information Frost
sets the poem on a forest road on an autumn
morning. He received inspiration
for the poem from the landscape in rural
Gloucestershire, England. While
living in Great Britain from 1912 to 1915, Frost
and his family had rented
a cottage, Little Iddens, near Dymock, Another writer, Edward Thomas
(1878-1917), was staying
with his family at a cottage half a mile away.
Thomas was a literary critic,
essayist, and nature writer who had favorably
reviewed a volume of Frost's
poetry and become one of his best friends. During
their frequent walks
in lanes, forests, and heather fields, they would
discuss poetry and botany,
noting the plants and flowers in the region. At
the urging of Frost, Thomas
began writing poetry and later achieved his
greatest fame in this genre.
Upon returning from their walks, Thomas often
expressed a wish that they
had taken an alternate trail or road to view its
plants. In response, Frost
began writing "The Road Not Taken," but he did not
finish it until he and
his family returned to the United States. Frost and Thomas continued to
communicate until Thomas died fighting in World
War I. In "The Road Not
Taken," the path through the "yellow wood" could
be anywhere, but Frost
may have been picturing the Gloucestershire wilds
when he began putting
the poem on paper.
. .
The rhyme scheme of the poem is as follows: (1) abaab, (2) cdccd, (3) efeef, (4) ghggh. All of the end rhymes are masculine—that is, each consists of a single syllable. (You may have noticed that the last word of the poem, difference, has more than one syllable. However, only the last syllable completes the rhyme with hence in line 22. Therefore, masculine rhyme occurs.) The title of the poem can refer to either road. Here's why: The speaker takes the road "less traveled" (line 19). In other words, he chooses the road not taken by most other travelers. However, when he chooses this less-traveled road, the other road then becomes the road not taken.
Themes Individualism .......The speaker chooses to go his own way, taking the “road less traveled” (line 19). Caution .......Before deciding to take the "road less traveled" (line 19), the speaker takes time to consider the other road. He says, "[L]ong I stood / And looked down one as far as I could" (lines 3-4). Commitment .......The speaker does not have second thoughts after making his decision. Accepting a Challenge .......It
may be that the road the speaker chooses is less
traveled because it presents
trials or perils. Such challenges seem to appeal to
the speaker.
 Robert Frost (1874-1963) was born in San Francisco, California, where he spent his childhood. In 1885, after his father died of tuberculosis, the Frosts moved to Massachusetts. There, Robert graduated from high school, sharing top honors with a student he would later marry, Elinor White. Frost attended Dartmouth and Harvard, married Miss White in 1895, worked farms, and taught school. In his spare time, he wrote poetry. Disappointed with the scant attention his poems received, he moved with his wife to Great Britain to present his work to readers there. Publishers liked his work and printed his first book of poems, A Boy’s Will, in 1913, and a second poetry collection, North of Boston, in 1914. The latter book was published in the United States in 1915. Having
established his reputation, Frost returned to the
United States in 1915
and bought a small farm in Franconia, N.H. To
supplement his income from
the farm and his poetry, he taught at universities.
Between 1916 and 1923,
he published two more books of poetry—the second
one, New Hampshire,
winning the 1923 Pulitzer Prize. He went on to win
three more Pulitzer
Prizes and was invited to recite his poem “The Gift
Outright” at President
John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in January 1961.
Frost died in Boston two
years later. One may regard him as among the
greatest poets of his generation.
1. Do you
think Frost intended
the y in yellow (line 1) to suggest
the diverging roads?
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