The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost – Explanation with questions and answers
CBSE/NCERT Class 9 syllabus
About the poet
Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963) was an American who scaled great heights of popularity among his native Americans, but among the vast number of English poetry readers who read his poems for pleasure and as a pastime. Like many other English poets of his time, he adored Nature and loved delving into the many riddles it offered. Frost’s own life was full of non-conventional decisions and a few twists and turns. At one stage, he even worked as a cobbler. But, by the time he wrote this poem, he had scaled great heights in the literary world. Perhaps, this poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ was written when he was in a reminiscent mood.
On one occasion, the speaker was leisurely strolling through a stretch of forest when he found that his track had split into two different paths. He paused for some time trying to decide which path to take. He looked keenly in the directions of both the paths. They looked quite similar. Dry leaves lay scattered on both of them. He could discern a difference.
- One path appeared to wind into a patch of undergrowth.
- The other looked very similar, but had more grass on it. Obviously, it was much less used by visitors to the forest.
The speaker thought for a while about the path he should choose. He decided to go along the second path that was grassy and was surely not the choice of the normal travellers. He walked along this grassy, less-trodden path, but decided that he would return on another occasion to explore the path he was abandoning then. However, a repeat visit never happened.
He reminisced about this experience years later after becoming a literary icon. It was a flash back to the years that had gone by when he took to literature as a passion, giving up professional choices that promised steady monthly incomes. The journey to satisfy his passion for writing was riddled with difficulties. He had to grapple with erratic incomes, criticisms, and derision for choosing a unsure professional path. However, he proved everyone wrong and climbed to the zenith of the literary world.
Reflecting on the occasion he had chosen to tread the grassy sparingly-used path in preference to the better-used path, he felt a deep sense of satisfaction for his non-conventional thinking and his bold approach in listening to the inner call of his mind and soul.
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Thinking about the Poem (Questions and model answers)
I. 1. Where does the traveller find himself? What problem does he face?
Answer .. The traveller finds himself standing lonely at the bifurcation point of a lonely forest track. He can’t decide which of the two paths to choose as both look similar.
2. Discuss what these phrases mean to you.
(i) a yellow wood .. A forest with trees bearing ageing leaves.
(ii) it was grassy and wanted wear.. It had a lot of grass. Understandably, not many people walked on it. The grass grew because of that.
(iii) the passing there . Ans .. Walking over it.
(iv) leaves no step had trodden black . Ans .. Since hardly anyone walked along the paths, the strewn leaves didn’t look black and mauled.
(v) how way leads on to way … Ans.. Once one takes up a certain course in life, one seldom can retrace it to change course.
3. Is there any difference between the two roads as the poet describes them
(i) in stanzas two and three?
Answer .. Both tracks looked very similar. They were strewn with dry leaves and were not messy at all. It pointed to the fact that not many people walked on them. One path was lost in an undergrowth some distance away. The other path was grassy and bore no mark of humans walking on it.
(ii) in the last two lines of the poem?
Answer .. The author chose the less conventional and more uncertain path in life, but his choice had proved to be very rewarding and deeply satisfying.
4. What do you think the last two lines of the poem mean? (Looking back, does
the poet regret his choice or accept it?)
Answer .. The author doesn’t regret his decision at all. On the contrary, he rejoices his choice because it has shot him to universal fame.
II. 1. Have you ever had to make a difficult choice (or do you think you will have difficult choices to make)? How will you make the choice (for what reasons)?
Answer .. My difficult time will come when I pass Class 12. I will have to decide the profession that I should take. I will listen to the inner voice of my soul and go by it.
2. After you have made a choice do you always think about what might have been, or do you accept the reality?
Answer .. Yes, sometimes I reflect on it, but not very seriously.
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