Summary on Road Not Taken

Robert Frost read The Road Not Taken in front of Amherst College students on the invitation of Alexander Meiklejohn, an educator and president of Amherst. Meiklejohn, in the effort of making Amherst into a place of essentially intellectual, a place of mind, a liberal college; invite the poet to join the Amherst College faculty. The president might have congratulated himself by taking the less traveled road and invited a poet who’s lack of college degree, into his faculty.

Pritchard then comments on the nature of Frost: his wildness spirit and its unwillingness to be restrained within the form

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For Frost, intellectual activity is something that all the ‘fun’ is by being ‘outside’ and by saying things that suggest formulae that won’t formulate—that almost but don’t quite formulate. The road which symbolizes our options in life, choose the road and don’t regret your choice later in life.

Pritchard analyze The Road Not Taken having the large moral meaning which is: go, as I did, your own way, take the road less traveled by, and it will make “all the difference”.

Pritchard concludes that The Road Not Taken became a popular poem not only because of its inspiring message, but also the noble of the poem and the mischievousness of it. The writer then claimed that the poet speak a different story in the last stanza which tells that ‘with a sigh’ and ‘ages and ages hence’.

Prichard indicates that Frost is being subtle in his poem. Not just subtle, but so much so as to fool ‘the casual person’ into thinking that what he said was obvious.

From my opinion, The Road Not Taken is an especially inspirational poem which is why I chose to work on this particular poem. This latter aspects is what makes The Road Not Taken un-boring and something other than a ‘sincere’ poem, in the way so many readers have taken Frost to be sincere. The fun is outside the formulae it seems almost but not quite to formulate. Pritchard takes the less traveled road, by heeding the message in the poem and analyze The Road Not Taken with an account of Frost’s own events in life compared to others who just do a critique on the beautiful poem.

The poem The Road Not Taken was meant for Edward Thomas, a friend of the poet and Frost was disappointed that Thomas failed to understand it as a poem about himself and insisted that Frost to be more direct with his poem, so that the reader will understand the fun of the thing. It is as Pritchard said, a matter of impulse on which road to choose.

Common topics in this essay:
Amherst College, Edward Thomas, Amherst Meiklejohn, , Robert Frost, Alexander Meiklejohn, poem road, fun outside, traveled road, amherst college, analyze road, liberal college,

Approximate Word count = 485
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)

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