We have produced collaborative paraphrases of Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" in class on google.docs to which you all have access. Now, before we discuss this poem further as a group, I would like each of you to write a carefully composed and punctuated paragraph expressing your understand of what the poem is about and is expressing. Do not be afraid to hypothesize or venture a guess ... I will not be grading for correctness of interpretation. Just communicate to me your thoughts on the subject. Submit your paragraph here as a comment by 7:15 am Monday morning, February 6th. Comments will not appear on the blog until later Monday.
I believe this poem is talking about choices in life. There will always be choices, and there will always be positives and negatives, and reasons to and reasons not to choose one option over the other. However, in the end, you only get to choose one. So the message is to take great care in making decisions because the choices you make often impact you greatly later in life. And one other message I believe this poem is expressing is that it is often good to choose the option less chosen by others in the past. There are times when you need to be original, and if you just go along with all the others, you will never be able to shine above everybody else and make advances in areas where you otherwise would not have had the opportunity had you just "gone with the flow." Bottom line, there are 2 messages; be careful when making decisions, and do not always go with the flow in decision making because the "road not taken" can often take you farther in life.
ReplyDeleteThis Robert Frost poem is called "The Road Not Taken". Judging by the general content and sentiment of the poem, it seems like Mr. Frost is remembering the time in his life when he had the choice to be either a poet or take another, more conventional "path". The first stanza is talking about the time in his life when he had to make a decision about what career to pursue. He starts to consider which path might suit him better. In the second stanza, we see that he chooses the more unconventional, "unworn" path. Once he starts wandering down the route to becoming a poet, he sees that many more people that one might think have become poets and have had to make the same decision. In the third stanza, he talks about first breaking into poetry. He starts walking on leaves that have not been stepped on yet. This means that he was writing poetry in a different way than other contemporary poets. He thinks that he might be able to return to the original path one day but doubts that he will ever get a chance to go back. "One thing leads to another." In the fourth and final stanza, Mr. Frost tells the audience that he had the choice to pick a career and path for life. He chose the one that suited him best, "and that made all the difference."
ReplyDeleteWilliam Weinstein
ReplyDeleteI think that the poem is talking about a major decision in the poet's life. He was faced with two options, each of which was going in the same direction but may or may not have the same destination- in fact, they probably never meet up again.One of the paths is more conventional, more common, perhaps more easily accepted; it will lead him down a familiar road. The other path is not as welcoming, seems a little more fraught with peril, and is less chosen. The poet could only choose one, so he took the path that was a little more difficult, more unconventional- and, he says, that has made all the difference. Due to the fact that he chose the more uncommon way, he has led an entirely different life, and he still wonders what would have happened had he gone the other way.
This poem is comparing life to a path through a forest. Its discussing how many times in life, we have to make a choice between two things to do something or go somewhere. Oftentimes we try to look ahead, but we no matter how hard we try we can't see where each path in life will take us. When you do decide however, think long and hard, and sometimes it pays off to travel the one path in life that seems different and might even be more profitable for you in the future. As Robert Frost says in his poem, "It has made all the difference."
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I would like to congratulate the NY Giants on a hard-fought victory against one of the best teams in the NFL.
ReplyDelete"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, is a poem that exemplifies something that happens every day to every one. Often, people find themselves in a difficult situation, and do not know which side to take. There is a fork in the road, and you have to choose one way. In the poem, the narrator encounters a fork in the road, and he decides to take the road less traveled by. He chooses this road because he wants to make his own decisions in life, rather than do what everyone else does. It is interesting that he says in the end that he took the road less traveled by when he clearly says earlier that neither were less traveled by.
This poem is describing the process of a man making a decision between right and wrong. The man sees both of his options clearly. He thinks about the consequences and the rewards. He finally decides to make the decision that many people do not make, the one to do what is right. In the poem, it is said that the path “wanted wear”, which means that it is less worn down than the other path. This shows that the choice to do what is right is more rare in the world than the choice to do what is wrong. At the end the poem states that the man took the, “one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” The man decides to do what most people do not, what is right, and it changes everything.
ReplyDeleteI think that this poem is about deciding between two similar things. In this poem, Frost comes to a fork in the road. He does not know which road to take because they are both very similar. He decides one road because it looks like not as many people have chosen that one. In a way, he regrets it because he wanted to also pick the other road. He hopes he can return to the fork one day, but being realistic, he understands that he will never get the chance. This is very similar to our lives today. We always have decisions to make. They may be very similar, and we may want to pick both of them. When we are only able to pick one thing, we generally regret the fact that we did not pick the other. Everybody faces these types of situations in life.
ReplyDelete"The poem is basically about a man who is at a split in the road in the woods. He decides to take one road because it hasn't been traveled for a while, even though both were about the same. He marks the path for another day, but he knew that the paths kept leading on to other paths and that he wouldn't be coming back. He kind of regrets taking that road and not the other. Most likely, the road is metaphorical and stands for either life in general or a choice. This is most likely not about his personal experience, as the only very likely regrettable decision he made was only going to college for 3 months."
ReplyDeleteThis poem is about decision making. He stands in the forest choosing which path to take just as all people, at one point in their life, stand before two decisions. He wishes he could travel both roads by returning to that point but that is simply impossible. One cannot go back to a point in time and make again their decision. We all have choices in life, whether we go one way or the other is what makes the difference. Here, the man who stands in the forest takes the road less traveled. He makes the harder decision. However, in the end, taking the harder path has served him the best. One must not always take the easy path traveled by the majority. When people choose routs of hard work and difficulty the end gain is of a higher sum.
ReplyDeleteI think this poem is talking about a difficult decision that the poet had to make in his life. This decision was probably one that has influenced his life greatly, and he wanted to let others know this how important taking the "road less traveled" was, and reflect back on this decision as well. The path that he chose for his life was perhaps the harder, or less common choice, and one that, I think, he was not completely set on taking until the last moment. It could be that the poet wanted to share the feelings or thoughts that were running through his head at that very moment that caused him to take this different path, which caused his life to play out the way it did. He may be trying to express to the world why and how it is so important to consider taking the "other path", and how important it may be to one's future.
ReplyDeleteI think that the poet is writing about choices in general; we are faced with two choices and we don't know which to choose. The poet sees two paths that look almost exactly alike. They are even both worn down about the same even though the poet thinks otherwise at first sight. The poet has to figure out which way he wants to go. He knows that he can't go down both roads and that it's very unlikely that he will come back one he starts down one of them. He also talks about how he will look back "ages and ages hence" with a sigh. I think that he means that he knows he might wish that he had chosen differently at the very beginning. I also can see though, how the sigh might be interpreted as a sigh of relief that he chose the path he did instead of any other.
ReplyDeleteThis poem is about making the right decisions. In this poem a traveler comes to a fork in a road. This fork represents a situation in life where someone must make a difficult decision. While most people would travel along the road that is more commonly taken, this traveler chooses the less popular decision. The traveler says that choosing the less common road “has made all the difference.” I think what this poem is saying is although the more common decision may seem better it may not always be that way.
ReplyDeleteThis poem is about decisions in life. Sometimes the decisions are big and sometimes they hardly seem like they could make a difference, but they are always important. It's about the path every person takes and how people always have to make decisions to keep moving forward. Most people will take the path that they see everyone else taking, but the author is saying that the less common path is just as good. Even though when you take the less common path, or make the less common choice, you stand out, that decision could make a huge difference in your life.
ReplyDelete"The Road Not Taken," written by Robert Frost, seems to discuss a really typical conflict in our lives. Each of us come to a point in time where we have two choices to make, one is sometimes harder and one is often more conventional. When I read the poem, I personally thought that Frost was reminiscing on a point in his life where he made a choice between being a poet or something more conventional. In the first stanza, he's discussing when he was making a decision of what career to pursue, and he's considering which might be more fitting for him. In the second stanza, he chooses the more unconventional, more complicated path. After he starts working on becoming a poet, he realizes many have been put in the same position as him. The third stanza talks about him discovering things about poetry that were previously unknown to him, and many others. He start to write in a different way than the poets at that time, and he begins to think about returning to the original path one day. In the final stanza, he tells us that when choosing a career and path for life, he chose the one that suited him best, and that was the smart decision.
ReplyDelete“The Road Not Taken” is a poem in which Robert Frost recalls a time in his life when he had to make an important decision. Frost had to choose between a more conventional path in life and “the one less traveled by.” Taking the more conventional path would mean an easy and unexciting, but secure future for Frost. Taking the path less traveled by is the riskier option; there is no guarantee whether it will lead to great success or great failure. He cannot see where the path leads or in which direction it will take him. In the end, Frost chooses to take the uncommon path, which leads him to a different life, maybe, even a more exciting life. In the closing stanza, Frost looks back and wonders what would have happened differently in his life if he had chosen to walk along the traditional path. Taking the path less traveled by “had made all the difference” in his life.
ReplyDeleteThis poem is a powerful story of a man who made a seemingly simple decision that ultimately changed his life. Frost ponders which road to take and decides to be spontaneous and take the "one less traveled by." There is a powerful message in this poem. When facing difficult life decisions, one should not base it solely on what others do. We all have our own identities and should have the confidence to make our own decisions. After all, they can change your life.
ReplyDelete"The Road Not Taken" is simply about making a choice of one thing over another. However, the speaker, in this case, has just realized the gravity of this kind of choice. The idea that one road can lead to one life and the other road to another has filled him with all sorts of emotions, ranging from sadness and regret to happiness and ambition. This sudden wave of dramatic thinking drives him to choose the road "less traveled by." He decides that special occasions call for special choices. He has had a revelation that the choice to choose which road to walk down is probably the most important choice he has ever had to make. Rather than letting this moment pass by without realizing, he decides to take advantage of such a momentous yet personal occasion by making a choice that will affect him in ways that he can't even imagine, and he's ready to live with that choice.
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