The Road Not Taken

1. Think about a significant decision you have made in your own life (examples include making a large purchase, choosing to attend an event, deciding which school to attend, or signing up for a sport or activity). In a journal entry or piece of freewriting, answer the following questions:

• How did that decision impact the course of your day, week, year, or entire life? Did that decision lead to other significant decisions or have a kind of “ripple effect” in your life?
• If you had chosen a different option, how would things have turned out differently?
• Now that you are looking back, do you wish you had made a different choice, or are you happy with the decision you made? Explain.
• Consider the message of Frost’s poem: In hindsight the traveler views the path he took as less travelled, although in the moment he saw the two paths as equal in every respect. Do you think that when faced with a life decision, one will always be “right” and the other “wrong?” Explain your opinion.

2. Robert Frost wrote “The Road Not Taken” for his neighbor and fellow poet, Edward Thomas. Frost and Thomas would often take walks together, on which Thomas would spend time debating which path to take, a habit that annoyed Frost. With this contextual information in mind, Thomas serves as the speaker and hiker in the poem.

How does this background information influence your understanding of the poem? Does it change your reading of the poem in any way? What impact does it have on how you interpret the poem’s themes and symbols?

Use these questions to explain in 1-2 paragraph(s) how the poem’s context influences your understanding of the poem’s overall message/themes. In your response, contrast your initial interpretation of the poem with your interpretation after learning this background information. How did your impressions change? What differences of meaning did you detect?

3. Consider the poem’s natural setting. What is the Frost saying about nature by placing the hiker and his decisions within the context of navigating forest paths? Think about possible symbolic meanings behind the yellow wood and the fork in the road. How do these images, as symbols, work alongside the forest setting? Create an essay with an introduction (including a thesis statement), two body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Your thesis statement should make an assertion about what the poem teaches about nature. Your two body paragraphs should each explore one of the poem’s symbols or other literary devices; show how each symbol or device supports your main idea about the poem’s message concerning nature.