Road not taken summary line by line
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Each line has eight syllables with slight variations here and there to impart informality and casualness of tone. Simplicity, clarity, epigrammatic force and terseness are the hallmarks of the stanzas, each consisting of five lines. Winters also argues that in The Road not Taken Frost is mistaking whimsical impulse for moral choice, and this blunder obscures his understanding and we get a feeling that his mood regarding the value of the entire business is very uncertain. Winters feels: “All have a single theme: the, whimsical accidental and incomprehensible nature of the formative decision and I should like to point out that if one takes this view of the formative decision one has cut oneself off from understanding most of human experience, for in these terms there is nothing to be understood”. He has shown the wrath and ire of his angry mind through his devastating pen in his well-known essay, “ Robert Frost or the Spiritual Drifter as Poet”, in one clean sweep. Yvor Winters has spared no pains to speak in strong, derogatory terms about this poem. But perhaps it was not without an intuitive impulse that it was motivated. Hence, we find that the poet’s choice was logically incomprehensible and appears wholly arbitrary, whimsical and undetermined. In interviews, conversation and lectures, Frost always stresses that though the road he had taken had: There are no residues of self-respect, moral obligation, not even curiosity in Frost’s preference of the road he finally did take. There are no obvious reasons for Frost preferring one road to the other. In The Road not Taken, the problem of choice is very elementary. With Frost, these moments become the theme themselves, not just a prop or a backdrop for developing his themes. Crucial moments when choices have to be made are distinct spots of time in human life. Along with this poem, Frost has written many poems in which the question of making a choice is the central point-choices that have to be made compulsorily, choices that have been made, choices that could not be made. It is like a resting point to which Frost keeps returning on and often. George Nitchie points out that the problem of choice is one of the major themes in Frost’s poetry. But as destiny had it, it was the right road for Frost, the road he was, bound to take. The road that Frost took, (though not wholly of his choice) was not only a ‘different road’-it was a very lonely road, very few people took to it. The poet’s difference is a characteristic part of him and is in him, ingrained in him even before he launched on his career as a poet. And this is what has made difference to the poet. In particular the poet has an intuition that one day he will look back in retrospect and perhaps be glad that he took the less frequented road. It is in making a choice that one has to order one’s priorities and is tested. One cannot always have the best of everything. In general, the poet realizes that a person has very often to make choices. This inevitability, which apparently has an element of choice is brought in this oft-quoted and oft-misunderstood poem, The Road not Taken. He was inevitably guided towards his destination by some spirit, some unseen forces that keep working on man. Relating the poem to the reality of Frost’s experience, Untermeyer says that Frost has gone his own way. Nitchie points out this poem has for its theme, one of the major themes in Frost’s poetry- the problem of having to make a choice. Here the poet takes his chance and comments on the difficulty and importance of having to make a choice. The poet’s creative faculty gets enlivened when he faces the problem of having to choose one of the two roads at a bifurcation.
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In the poem, we find a rare blend of ‘inner lyric vision and the outer contemplative narration’.
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It has been acknowledged as one of the finest and most popular poems of the volume. The Road not taken was first published in 1916, in the volume of poems entitled Mountain Interval.