The Road Not Taken

How does Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” relate to choices you have made in your life and to choices you will make in the future?

I shared the following video with the students before they were asked to give written responses. This allowed them to hear as well as read Frost's poem.

http://www.nextvista.org/2006/09/10/traveling-robert-frosts-the-road-not-taken/

Next Vista leads a monthly discussion in Tapped In (www.tappedin.org). Their next presentation is on December 7, 2006.


The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


I think this poem means a lot because we will be faced with choices in life and there will be different options. If we can prevent looking back and sighing, that is what the best choice is. DW

I think the poem is saying that everything you do effects you down to the smallest thing to the biggest. I made small choices that changed my life and big choices that also changed my life. GS

When I chose The Road, so to speak, I chose the road of drugs. It was one of the worst decisions in my life. It was the short road. It ended just as fast as it began. Now I’m on another road which looks more bright. JG

I would say the poem we went over today is very true and relates to me in a major way. I would say the choices you make in life make or break you because you learn from every decision made in life. In the future I plan on making wise and self-decided choices because I’ve kind of gone with the flow instead of being independent. MJ

The road not taken in my life was the road to success. What I mean is there is a life of violence and crime or the road to good behavior. I took the road to violence and crimes, therefore, I took the wrong road. When I get out I am going to get better directions! HZ

This poem relates to some of the choices I made in my life. The main one was either I stick to sports and go on to college or I start hustling and doing what I want. I took the hustling path because I was greedy. This path brought me a lot of bad consequences, but the amount o stuff I learned by leading this lifestyle out-weighs all the time I spent locked up. A way that this will help me make choices in the future is by leading me to take the road that is less traveled, but make it positive. SS

It is kind of like my life. I made the wrong choices and look at where I am with the choices I made. In the future hopefully the choices I made in the past I will look upon and see that that what path I chose was the the wrong path and so hopefully I realize it and not make the same choice and take the wrong path because I will end up here or worse and that you can learn from your past. MW

It’s like you have two paths two choices to pick from. Either the good path or the bad path. Like I went down the wrong path and got locked up. Now I’m on the good path trying successfully to get out and do the right thing in life. BS

When I read this poem it relates to me because I wanna do good when I grow up and do good and do something with my life, not be a bum…help others out, be supportive and do good things and stay out of jail. HG

I relate to the choices that I made because I did not make good choices, well, not that many good choices and I might have many more choices to go in life. The narrator of the poem said our choices limit what we do. AC

What I want for my future is to become a successful businessman. See, what I plan on doing when I leave this place is to first finish school then go to barber school to become a licensed barber. From there I’m going to college to major in business management and technology and once I graduate I want to go back to school for a bachelor’s degree. But what I don’t want to happen is for me to end up either in jail for the rest of my natural life or shot dead in the streets. TM

This poem relates to what I did in the past because it tells about the choices he had made in the time of need to do something. I learned from this poem that you can learn from the mistakes that you did in the past so you could do it better than before in the future. The choices I will make in the future will be better thought about and I won’t do the same mistakes over and end up in a place I don’t belong. DJ

It kind of relates to my life cause it depends on the choices I make. If I make the wrong choices now it will effect me cause if I do something serious it could just automatically just ruin my life off the bat! That is why I should concentrate on my actions that I make from now on in life. ML

Like the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, there were two roads and each one would take you to a different place. Well, in my situation I chose the wrong road which led me here. In the future I will take the other road and not take the blame for somebody else. RM

It related to me because when I was at home I made a bad choice to threaten my neighbors. So, instead of taking the straight way down the road I took the wrong way and now I am locked up doing time for not going down the straight road. LW

To me this poem is talking about two roads – one negative and one positive. The title, “the road not taken,” is implying that you always take one road or path and go down it and there’s always the one you didn’t take. I took the negative road and led myself down the wrong path making wrong choices about things I did and people I was with. Now that I’m here at Loysville I’ll have the opportunity to take that road that was not taken. Hopefully, that road is the right road and will help me make the right choices and decisions, but only I can make the road work. For every person there is always that road that has not been taken but is waiting for them. TS