38 pages • 1 hour read
Robert FrostThe Road Not Taken
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1916A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
"Roads" by Edward Thomas (1916)
Seen as a necessary, sobering response to Frost’s wry and ironic poem by the young poet to whom Frost directed his poem, this poem, earnest and dramatic in its delivery, uses Frost’s controlling metaphor of life’s crossroad choices to explore the tragic and haunted decision by so many in their generation to serve in the army and fight overseas, never to return, the very fate that awaited Thomas himself when, driven by what he perceived to be Frost’s taunting, he decided to join the army. He died three months later during a German artillery attack.
"Invictus" by William Ernest Henley (1888)
A bold and dramatic declaration of the power of the individual to make courageous decisions and to follow, uncomplicated by second-guessing, the difficult path that the heart and the soul demand. This often-quoted example of High Victorian wisdom poetry is exactly the poem that more than a century of Frost’s readers have wanted “The Road Not Taken” to be. Absent of metaphor or irony, the poem boldly celebrates those who go their own way. This poem provides an example of the literary context, since this was exactly the didactic homily poetry that Frost rejected.
"Birches" by Robert Frost (1916)
A poem that appeared in the collection in which “A Road Not Taken” served as prologue, this poem provides the sweeping affirmation of engaging the joys and sorrows of life lived in the aggressively spontaneous immediate (suggested by the metaphor of kids swinging grandly and happily on birch tree branches) that “A Road Not Taken” suggests in its sly, ironic dismissal of the value of careful planning and diligent overthinking. The poet declares here that urgently lived life, keyed here to the spirit and freedom of youth, is heaven enough. This poem should be the Frost poem read at graduations.
Further Literary Sources
"Robert Frost, ‘The Road Not Taken’: Regret in the Human Psyche" by Luke Judkins (2014)
A riff on the traditional approaches to Frost’s poem, the article uses the rubric of a more scientific take on the psychology of regrets to explore the tragedy of the hiker. The hiker in the poem manifests critical steps that make inevitable the feeling of lost chances and disappointment typical of regret. It uses Frost’s friendship with Edward Thomas to provide the reading with historical context.
"What Gives Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’ Its Power?" by David C. Ward (2015)
A wonderfully accessible populist reading of the cultural impact of Frost’s poem on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of its publication, eminent Smithsonian historian Ward’s essay examines the life of Frost and how the poem’s wry and ironic temperament defines Frost’s own extensive career. The poem is an example of Frost’s multilayered poetics.
"The Most Misread Poem in America" by David Orr (2015)
This landmark Paris Review essay explores the long history of the poem’s misreading by generations of Frost enthusiasts who were determined to make the pome into something Frost never intended. It uses a variety of pop culture appropriations of the poem, from car commercials to Super Bowl promos, from state funeral eulogies to classic greeting cards, to explore how easily Frost’s subtle irony can be lost or (as is most often the case) deliberately ignored.
Listen to the Poem
Perhaps the most intriguing reading of the poem is by Frost himself. Because the clip baldly identifies the poem as a “motivational poem” and puts hyper-serious, melodramatic, spacey New Age music behind the reading, Frost’s impeccable New England recitation, clipped and syllable-crisp and without grand drama, works against such lush gaudiness to reveal the poem’s subtle ironies. Frost does not pause for hyper-dramatic effect, his delivery is quick, snarky. And when the poem speaks about how ages and ages hence this decision will be hailed as courageous, Frost’s barbed-wire delivery makes clear the preposterousness of that idea.
Related Titles
By Robert Frost
