Quiz RL.2: The Road Not Taken

Name:_______________________________________________Date:______________

“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost

Read the poem below, then answer the questions which follow.

StandardCCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

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 marked 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.

- Robert Frost (1915)



1. Give a short summary of the above poem:

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2. Have you ever had to make a difficult choice between two options? What was your choice? What sort of advice do you think Frost would have given you?

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3. Why, in the last stanza, does Frost portray himself as sighing when recounting his past decision?

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