The Road Not Taken Research Paper

The Biographical Context of “The Road Not Taken” Every event that takes place in our life has an affect on what will happen next or in the future. It is no different for Robert Frost and his poetry. Robert Frost was a poet born in San Francisco but later moved to Massachusetts with his mother and siblings. Frost is a well known poet for many pieces but one of his most famous poems, “The Road Not Taken”. Robert Frost had many events in his life that inspired his poetry such as: the difficulties he experienced throughout his childhood, the struggles with which career path to take, and the travels abroad that led to new friendships. The many trials of Robert Frost’s life were huge inspirations for his poetry, specifically, “The Road Not Taken”. One of the authors of The Reader’s Companion to American Society, Linda Wagner-Martin, acknowledges, “It spoke of despair, of endurance, of failure- of life as many readers had experienced it.” (432) His poetry spoke of the poverty and difficult childhood that his father left Frost and his family to deal with after his death. Frost speaks of taking a different path, one that is less traveled, speaking of taking a different path than the one his father chose. “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the

William H. Pritchard, an author of Modern American Poetry, points out, “But his attempt at poultry farming was none too successful and by 1906 he had begun teaching English at Pinkerton Academy, a secondary school in New Hampshire” (1). Although Frost failed at other occupations, those failures pushed him into teaching which also helped blossom his poetry. “Then took the other, just as fair and having perhaps the better claim” (1026) Frost claims. Eventhough he has a bitter childhood, a rocky start to his young adulthood, and was unsure of which career path to take, his love of poetry led him to best