"The Road Not Taken" read by Robert Frost

Please complete both handouts-the vocabulary and the summary paragraph--on looseleaf for next class. Read my comments to help you understand the poem.

The newest piece of literature we will analyze is "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. This is a very well-known poem by a well-loved American poet who used natural and rural symbols in his poems to discuss social themes. This poem has been loved and read and misunderstood by people for almost 100 years! Be very careful when you read and analyze this poem.          Ask and answer these questions as you read and analyze the poem: Symbolism--The "road" is a not a real or literal  road. What is the road a symbol for? Who is the traveler?  Setting--When and where does this poem take place? Why are the leaves of the wood yellow?  Conflict--What is his conflict? When he can't see to the end of the road what does he choose to do?  A road that is grassy and "wanted wear"--wanted someone to walk on it--what does that mean? What does he say that he will think about his decision? What I am asking you to look at now are the last 2 lines, in the last stanza: I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. You can't take this to mean that he is sorry, or that he regrets his choice. NO!  He says, as he is making a choice (at the fork in the road=symbolism), and he is young--he is looking to his future (foreshadowing)  that he could have chosen either way (both choices are equal, popular, and nice, ("both paths may be equally worn and equally leaf-covered"). He says in the 2nd and 3rd stanzas that in the future, he will look back and then call one road "less traveled by." This is Foreshadowing - hints or a suggestion of what is to come in the action of a play, poem or a story not Flashback (looking at the past).       The sigh "aaaah", is mistakenly interpreted as regret (that he made the wrong decision)  or self satisfaction (that he made the right decision). But no! Robert Frost is playing with us. He is not saying he made a good or bad decision. He says that both roads look the same, but in the future (he can not change his mind, change his decisions) he KNOWS he will think that he took the one that was less common, less popular. And that "has made the difference.' made his life turn out the way it did.        You can never go back and change your choices in the past-- you can only go forward. When you are older, your memories trick you, you don't remember things correctly. It's human nature.

Listen to Robert Frost read his poem.......You may have to copy and paste the URL into your browser. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15717 The Road Not Taken (1915)   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.