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Robert FrostA 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.
Although using a poet’s biography to provide historical context for a poem is often risky as it tends to limit the poem’s interpretation, Frost actually designed “The Road Not Taken” as a friendly jibe at a young neighbor named Edward Thomas (1878-1917), whom Frost met in Dymock when he and his wife moved into the cottage next door to Thomas and his family. Thomas yearned to be a poet, but he pursued any writing opportunities he could find that would pay, mostly travel essays and book reviews. Frost recognized Thomas’s keen ear for the music of language and encouraged him to pursue poetry during meandering walks the two would take about the Gloucestershire countryside. What irritated Frost, however, was Thomas’s habit of lingering about the paths that laced the woods trying to decide which path to follow. Thomas serves as the model for the narrator of the poem, with Frost as the overarching author(ity) finding the hiker fussy and compulsively indecisive. The poem was intended to good-naturedly poke fun at his friend’s grand Hamlet-like diddling over what was in perspective a trivial choice. The narrator ironically dismisses as wasted energy the endless dithering over alternatives.
By Robert Frost
Acquainted with the Night
Robert Frost
After Apple-Picking
Robert Frost
A Time To Talk
Robert Frost
Birches
Robert Frost
Dust of Snow
Robert Frost
Fire and Ice
Robert Frost
Mending Wall
Robert Frost
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
October
Robert Frost
Once by the Pacific
Robert Frost
Out, Out—
Robert Frost
Putting in the Seed
Robert Frost
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Robert Frost
The Death of the Hired Man
Robert Frost
The Gift Outright
Robert Frost
West-Running Brook
Robert Frost