The Road Not Taken
The Road Not Taken | |
---|---|
by Narrative poem | |
Meter | or |
Rhyme scheme | ABAAB |
Publication date | August 1915 |
Lines | 20 |
Metre | irregular iambic tetrameter |
Full text | |
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![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e8/The_Road_Not_Taken_-_Robert_Frost.png/220px-The_Road_Not_Taken_-_Robert_Frost.png)
"The Road Not Taken" is a
The first 1915 publication differs from the 1916 republication in Mountain Interval: In line 13, "marked" is replaced by "kept" and a dash replaces a comma in line 18.
Background
Frost spent the years 1912 to 1915 in England, where among his acquaintances was the writer Edward Thomas.[2] Thomas and Frost became close friends and took many walks together. One day, as they were walking together, they came across two roads. Thomas was indecisive about which road to take, and in retrospect often lamented that they should have taken the other one. After Frost returned to New Hampshire in 1915, he sent Thomas an advance copy of "The Road Not Taken". Thomas took the poem seriously and personally, and it may have been significant in his decision to enlist in World War I. Thomas was killed two years later in the Battle of Arras.[3][4]
Analysis
Structure
The poem consists of four
Rhythm
"The Road Not Taken" reads conversationally, beginning as a kind of photographic depiction of a quiet moment in yellow woods (imagery). The variation of its rhythm gives naturalness, a feeling of thought occurring spontaneously, affecting the reader's sense of expectation.[5] In one of the few lines containing strictly iambs, the more regular rhythm supports the idea of a turning towards an acceptance of a kind of reality: "Though as for that the passing there … " In the final line, the way the rhyme and rhythm work together is significantly different, and catches the reader off guard.[6]
Reception
"The Road Not Taken" is one of Frost's most popular works. Yet, it is a frequently misunderstood poem,
The poem's speaker tells us he "shall be telling", at some point in the future, of how he took the road less traveled … yet he has already admitted that the two paths "equally lay / In leaves" and "the passing there / Had worn them really about the same." So the road he will later call less traveled is actually the road equally traveled. The two roads are interchangeable.
Orr concluded by noting: "It is a poem about the necessity of choosing that somehow, like its author, never makes a choice itself—that instead repeatedly returns us to the same enigmatic, leaf-shadowed crossroads."[7]
Frost wrote the poem as a joke for his friend
Thompson suggests that the poem's narrator is "one who habitually wastes energy in regretting any choice made: belatedly but wistfully he sighs over the attractive alternative rejected."[13] Thompson also says that when introducing the poem in readings, Frost would say that the speaker was based on his friend Thomas. In Frost's words, Thomas was "a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn't go the other. He was hard on himself that way."[2]
In popular culture
Misunderstanding around the poem's meaning was highlighted in the Netflix TV series Orange Is the New Black.[15]
References
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/RobertFrostLeiden2017.jpg/300px-RobertFrostLeiden2017.jpg)
- ^ Robert Frost, "A Group of Poems", the Atlantic Monthly (August 1915). Accessed 2021-03-18.
- ^ ISBN 9780030178061.
- ^ Robinson, Katherine (2023-09-28). "Robert Frost: "The Road Not Taken" by Katherine Robinson". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2023-09-29.
- ^ Hollis, Matthew (2011-07-29). "Edward Thomas, Robert Frost and the road to war". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
- ISBN 9781400827534. p. 98
- ISBN 9780838755327. p. 71
- ^ a b c Orr, David (2015-09-11). "The Most Misread Poem in America". The Paris Review. Retrieved 2020-04-12.
- ^ Sternbenz, Christina. "Everyone Totally Misinterprets Robert Frost's Most Famous Poem". Business Insider. Retrieved 13 June 2015.
- ^ Robinson, Katherine. "Robert Frost: "The Road Not Taken"". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
- ^ Robinson, Katherine. "Poem Guide: Robert Frost: "The Road Not Taken"". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 14 December 2020.
- ^ Miles, Jonathan (May 11, 2008). "All the Difference". New York Times. Retrieved June 13, 2015.
- JSTOR 2925142.
- ^ a b Thompson, Lawrance (1959). Robert Frost. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
- ISBN 9780521109987. p. 73
- ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 2023-04-20.
External links
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