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Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Robert Frost . Robert Frost. Robert Frost, 1954. Robert Frost, (born March 26, 1874, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.—died Jan. 29, 1963, Boston, Mass.), U.S. poet. Frost’s family moved to New England early in his life.
Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. He is well known for his realistic writings of rural life and his use of American informal (slang) speech. [1] His poems were often set in rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, and used these settings to look at complex social and philosophical themes.
- Road Not Taken
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Who was Robert Frost?
- Author Biography
- Poem Summary
- Themes
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
- Criticism
- Sources
- For Further Study
Born in San Francisco, Frost was eleven years old when his father died, and his family relocated to Lawrence, Massachusetts, where his paternal grandparents lived. In 1892, Frost graduated from Lawrence High School and shared valedictorian honors with Elinor White, whom he married three years later. After graduation, Frost briefly attended Dartmout...
Line 1
In this line Frost introduces the elements of his primary metaphor, the diverging roads.
Lines 2-3
Here the speaker expresses his regret at his human limitations, that he must make a choice. Yet, the choice is not easy, since “long I stood” before coming to a decision.
Media Adaptations
1. An audio record titled “Robert FrostReads the Poems of Robert Frost” was released in 1957 by Decca. 2. A video titled Robert Frost,part of the Poetry America Series, is available through AIMS Media. 3. Robert Frost,a videocassette from volume 3 of the Voices and Visions Series, is available from Mystic Fire Video. 4. A 1958 interview with Robert Frost is available from Zenger Video.
Individualism
On the surface, “The Road Not Taken” seems to be encouraging the reader to follow the road “less travelled by” in life, a not-very-subtle metaphor for living life as a loner and choosing independence for its own sake when all other considerations come up equal. There is some evidence that makes this interpretation reasonable. The central situation is that one has to choose one road or the other without compromise—an absolutist situation that resembles the way that moral dilemmas are often phr...
Choices and Consequences
The road that forks into two different directions always presents a choice to be made, in life as well as in poetry. The speaker of this poem is not pleased about having to make this choice and says that he would like to travel both roads. This is impossible, of course, if the speaker is going to be “one traveler”: this raises the philosophical question of identity. What the poem implies, but does not state directly, is that the most important factor to consider when making a choice is that t...
Topics for Further Study
1. Give a detailed description of what the speaker will see on the less travelled road, bearing in mind that every object you mention will be considered symbolic for something in life. 2. Many readers never realize that Frost wrote this poem as a parody of an indecisive friend. Choose one character trait of one of your friends and write a poem about it. Do not mention the character trait directly in your poem, but show someone acting it out. 3. Why does the speaker say, “I shall tell this wit...
“The Road Not Taken” is arranged into four stanzas of five lines each. Its rhyme scheme is abaab, which means that the first line in each stanza rhymes with the third and fourth lines, while the second line rhymes with the fifth line. Most of the lines are written in a loose or interrupted iambic meter. An iambic foot contains two syllables, an uns...
The War: The symbolism of the two roads in this poem can be applied to any number of circumstances in life, and therefore we cannot identify any one particular meaning as the one that Frost had in mind. It is interesting to note, though, that in 1916,
Although critics tend to agree about the thematic concerns of “The Road Not Taken,” they are less consistent in evaluating its success. John T. Ogilvie, in an article published in South Atlantic Quarterly, suggests that the road is a metaphor for the writerly life, and that the choice the speaker makes here “leads deeper into the wood” which “thoug...
David Kelly
David Kelly is a freelance writer and instructor at Oakton Community College and College of Lake County, as well as the faculty advisor and co-founder of the creative writing periodical of Oak-ton Community College. He is currently writing a novel. In the following essay, Kelly argues that Frost’s reputation for aptly rendering the common man and his overall skill in manipulating language has fostered misinterpretation of the ironic tone of “The Road Not Taken.” Irony is frequently used in li...
What Do I Read Next?
1. The philosopher Jean Paul Sartre based his existential philosophy on the idea that we have the freedom to choose every action we make, and that, in spite of the way we talk about freedom as a good thing, choosing is a horrible responsibility. Many of Sartre’s philosophical books are very dense and complicated, but his drama Dirty Hands(1947) gives readers a good idea of his thoughts about responsibility. 2. Robert Frost: Landscapes of Self(1975) gives the reader an in-depth examination of...
Robert W. French
In the following essay, French stresses the importance of reading “The Road Not Taken” carefully to avoid misinterpreting its simplicity. Is there any poem in American literaturemore often and more consistently misinterpreted than Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”? Again and again the final three lines are used not only to describe Frost’s life, but also, and more generally, to characterize anyone who has broken with convention and set out on a lonely, independent course of action. For stud...
Ogilvie, John T., “From Woods to Stars: A Pattern of Imagery in Robert Frost’s Poetry,” in South Atlantic Quarterly,Vol. LVIII, No. 1, Winter, 1959, pp. 64-76. Pearce, Roy Harvey, “The Old Poetry and the New,” in The Continuity of American Poetry, Princeton UniversityPress, 1961, pp. 253-92. Thompson, Lawrence, Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph 19...
Cox, Sidney, A Swinger of Branches: A Portrait of Robert Frost,New York: New York University Press, 1957. Cramer, Jeffrey S., Robert Frost Among His Poems,Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1996. Fleissner, Robert F., “A Road Not Taken: The Romantically Different Ruelle,” in Robert Frost: Studies in the Poetry,edited by Kathryn Gibbs Harris, Boston: G...
Robert Frost: Poems study guide contains a biography of poet Robert Frost, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis of his major poems. Best summary PDF, themes, and quotes.
Summary. Robert Frost was important to American poetry during the first half of the twentieth century because he maintained traditional meter, structure, and themes during a time when...
Plot Summary. Modern Critical Views: Robert Frost is a collection of literary analyses edited and with an introduction by American literary critic Harold Bloom. A collection of literary critics and fellow writers elaborately examine Frost’s themes, stylistic choices, and several of his most famous works. It is part of a series entitled Modern ...
May 23, 2018 · Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963) was an intentionally American and traditionalist poet in an age of internationalized and experimental art. He used New England idioms, characters, and settings, recalling the roots of American culture, to get at universal experience. Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874.