Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"

good morning today we'll be speaking about one of America's most well known certainly most popular poets in the 20th century Robert Frost and the reason why I think Robert Frost provides a very interesting illustration of popular poetry in America is that I think there are certain discrepancies between the way in which his audience perceived him and the way in fact his poetry actually reads and should be understood but just to give you a small background about Robert Frost since as you can see from the handout that I've given you his dates are 1874 to 1963 I assume that most of you are unfamiliar with his personal appearances with the way he looked and the way he was received but just to give you some notion of the popularity that this poet had in the twentieth century he won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times in his lifetime the Pulitzer Prize is one of the popular calibrations of fiction and poetry in America but to win it four times is surely outstanding and the reasons for that I suspect is that most of his audience saw him as a very recognizable very gentle very regional personality with whom they could identify or empathize usually when people thought about Robert Frost they saw a man who stood a little under six foot tall he had a great shock of white hair he spoke in a kind of gravelly voice with a New England accent and it was always with New England that Robert Frost was associated particularly the states of Vermont and New Hampshire when people thought about Robert Frost or thought about Robert Frost poetry because frequently people assumed whenever Robert Frost wrote a poem the voice in those poems were the voice of the man that the poet and the speaker of the palms were identical and within those poems they found certain values that were associated with New England or more broadly America and those values were affirmations of certain cherished notions or traditions that Americans deeply felt and so when they heard Robert Frost read or when they read his words silently on the page themselves they had a wonderful sense of a deeper affirmations of things that they felt and even more than that since Robert Frost wrote in a language that was apparently straightforward very plain very simple no fancy abstruse of phraseology his audience felt very comfortable with them felt very comfortable with a man with his language and with his values so the in many ways as I say Robert Frost the person and the poet seemed to epitomize American values and affirmations and straightforward language and it was for that reason I suspect that he received those popular recognitions that he did as illustrated by the Pulitzer Prize given four times having said that having established Robert Frost the the if we had had a poet laureate in the early part of the 20th century which we didn't we do now as it turns out but if we had had a poll laureates surely Robert Frost would have been our poet laureate for surely the last forty years of his life but now here's the but on his 85th birthday 1959 there was a literary party held in his honor in which a certain heresy was introduced by one of the leading literary critics of America at the time Lionel trilling Lionel trilling and toasting Robert Frost on his 85th birthday introduced the notion the Robert Frost poetry is not as affirmative or cheerful or bright as most of his audience originally assumed in fact he spoke of Robert Frost as one of our terrifying poets he spoke of Robert Frost's poems as dark parables of the human condition and this needless to say shocked the audience when the response was recorded for weeks for months even four years after that people wondered how it was that Lionel trilling had the the gall with a nerve to question what turned out to be one of America's literary institutions Robert frost frost himself interestingly enough never disputed trillings comments he simply in some sense recorded his own discomfort at being looked at so closely the almost concomitant with this heresy if we can call it of Lionel trilling the official biography of Robert Frost began to appear this is written in three volumes by Lawrence Thompson Robert Frost himself had said to Thompson that he wanted him to be the official biographer and he did so and as the three volumes began to appear certain aspects of Robert Frost personal life showed up which turned out to be in many ways contradictory to the public image that frost presented as this gentle grandfatherly retainer or receptacle of American values and informations in fact it seemed as if the personal events of Frost life were entirely opposite that that of his public life one of his children suicided apparently is a direct result of Frost very harsh treatment of him throughout his life frost relationship with his wife was apparently a very bitter and awful one frost relationship with other poets with critics with people at the universities of which he's taught were very caustic the one phrase at which in some sense to my mind sums it up was told to me by the poet Anthony Hecht so frost said to him know when I die I want the whole world to die with me now as you can see this particular understanding of the private Robert Frost is at great variance with with the public Frost and it strikes me that one way in which we could test this particular kind of doubleness is to take a look at a poem of Robert Frost which to my mind if it's not the most popular poem that Robert Frost has ever written it's surely one of the top two and the poem that I'm referring to of course is the road not taken' you should all have it on your handout and as I am said to my colleagues earlier if there is a single poem that American high school students would have read throughout their career it would probably be this one or the other most popular Frost poem stopping by woods on a snowy evening and the reason why I choose this poem is that its popularity I think mirrors the kind of popularity the frost had throughout the first half of the 20th century and yet I think the close reading will reveal some of the discrepancies that we might find in frost personal life so before doing anything else I'd like to as I usually do in my poetry classes simply read the poem the title is 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 traveled by and that has made all the difference now my suspicion is that the appeal of this poem not not only in high school curricula but also across the broad American public resides in the way in which people have seen this extraordinarily simple poem as a parable for basic decisions one has to make in life I mean if you could think it's almost a cliche to be talking about walking down the path of life the road splits in two ways one has to make a fundamental decision about which road to choose and then people think back about that yes that's exactly what's taking place in the poem and then they remember the ringing conclusion of this poem it says I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference and in that those those lines in those last two lines people hear an affirmation of nonconformity don't go with the crowd go your own way just because everyone's going down one road you can take the path less traveled but you can go in your own way and that is the right thing to do because that will give you the personal character that's necessary to have the sense of having had a meaningful life as simply conforming to others expectations now that last phrase the last two lines of the poem to my mind has sunk into the collective consciousness of Americans along in the same way that say Henry David Thoreau's famous remark in Walden when he speaks about marching to a different drummer has the same kind of affirmation you go your own way you listen to your own insights you don't pay attention to others and perhaps I give an illustration of this because I mean just to show this is not simply something that has been understood by let's say superficial readers but also some of the most astute and and surely at least in the illustration I have in mind some of the geniuses of America have turned to this particular phrase as an illustration an affirmation of something they held deeply true Frank Lloyd Wright probably the most outstanding architect in the United States also wrote a great deal about his own life if many say he wrote much too much about his own life the but right at the beginning of his autobiography he tells a tale of walking out with his uncle Peter a Presbyterian minister up through the small snow hills behind his house in Wisconsin he describes his uncle Peter as a ramrod of a man a person who had a sense of moral certainty and direction and in some ways was assigned the task of taking little Frankie out for a walk not only for exercise but also for moral edification hey let go of Frankie's hand and he walked to the top of a small hill Oh Frank being seven or eight years old ran this way that way picked up a flower made a snowball whatever when he got to the top of the hill to join his uncle Dunkel grabbed him by the scruff his neck turned him around and showed him the two sets of tracks uncle Peters which ran directly from the house to the top of the hill the shortest distance between two points is a straight line in physics and morality and then there was this terrible zigzag here there there a route that was taken by young Frank Lloyd Wright and Uncle Peter of course wanted to illustrate what he should have done and then Frank Lloyd Wright says and without making any reference he says I took the road less traveled by collapses and that's made all the difference now Frank Lloyd Wright assumed that anyone reading this would key into that Robert Frost poem they know what he was talking about if you're in with the in-crowd you say uncle Peter and all those people who look in terms of conventional or consensus ways of looking at things they go that way but me Robert Frost and you gentle reader we know we're really going to to do now I say that because one of the problems with a poem of this sort is that once you take a closer look at it seems that those kind of values in those kind of affirmations begin to dissolve well I mean if we could if just go back to the poem there are certain to my mind critical issues that people who have read this poem now for let's see it was published in 1916 so that would make it 50 60 70 76 years the critical question that I put is this how do we know that the person speaking in his poem took the road less traveled by well one returns to the poem says 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 that first stanza is not talking about having gone one way or the other but that point at the fork in the road the speaker looks down one for as long as he could and then he says then took the other now this is very curious because what this says is that the road that was examined is not the one that's taken at all and the other ones taken very quickly doesn't say looked at the other one for a very long time look down this one then took the other very quickly and he says as just as fair and then adds and this is usually the lines that people recall it says and having perhaps the better claim because it was grassy and wanted wear and they said well there it is this road has grass growing on it presumably that one doesn't and therefore no one has trod on this particular path many people must have trod on the other and therefore he took the road less traveled by and yet we continue and it says though as for that the passing there had worn them really about the same that that is to say in terms of whatever coverage that there's on if this grass on the one was about the same amount on the other I mean whatever evidence you would use to say that the one is more or less traveled simply said wait a second they're about the same uh and then he adds even further and both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black now I mean we know from the yellow wood that this an autumnal scene one can easily imagine the situation where on an autumn morning the leaves have fallen down and as happens with moist leaves once people have walked on leaves they will turn black from the oxidation but this particular morning the leaves are equally covering both roads so aside from the fact that he is the first person there there's no way that he can tell from either the grass which he no we know he cannot see because they're both covered by leaves there is no way that this speaker the person in this poem who has to make this decision can decide on the basis of use which road is more or less traveled by ah and he stops at that point having told us on the first here's what I'm going to do well I looked at examine this road here I'm going to take the other and here's why I did it but as it turns out rather than give us evidence it becomes equivocation I did this and then he equivocates and then he equivocates yet again and what we have at the in the middle of that third stands he says oh I kept the first for another day yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back now to my mind this introduces a very different issue in this poem what we have in those lines there is someone who's saying well I'm taking this particular road here but as he says in the beginning of the pump I really want to go both ways I wish I could do everything but of course each time one makes a decision to go in one direction perforce a door closes someplace you can't go in the other direction so he says finally in this last stanza I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence and this I think is a very important shift in palm because up to this point the persons talking has been telling us about a decision that he's recently made remember he that the tents and his poem is such that he's speaking at a time not too long after he's gone down the one road he's thinking back about the decision that he made at that point and then suddenly in the last stands that he jumped forward to the future and says I shall be telling this with a sigh and of course a very interesting thing what kind of a size that is that a sigh of contentment of nostalgia of regret hmmm somewhere ages and ages hence and now we have the last three lines in some sense tells us the whole poem again little collapse of the home phone because he picks up the the opening line and then jumps to the end but notice this slight revision that takes place he says two roads diverged in a wood and I hesitation I took the one less traveled by and that made all the difference now if you follow the point here the evidence that has been presented to us in three stanzas beforehand contradicts that statement that is to say the person who is speaking who is saying I took the road less traveled by presumably from the vantage point in the future ages and ages hence from the vantage point of old age I remember back to that crucial decision I made in my youth and I made the right decision or at least it sounds that way when people listen to the poem as I say they remember what seems to be that ringing affirmation in the last two lines I took the one less traveled by and that's made all the difference he doesn't say in this poem whether it's a good difference or a bad difference but most people want to hear the good difference and so they say that's the way it must be and so taking the road less traveled by is a good thing so good that it seems to blur people's memories of the first three stanzas of the poem our desire as Americans to want to hear that affirmation of nonconformity apparently has that this has gone on now as I say for 70 seventy-three years which people have read the poem and most readers come away feeling that this is a poem it's affirming unconformity and yet I would suggest something entirely different if we look at that at the end we have a speaker of the poem who's saying I took the one less traveled by telling us if that is that in the future I will provide a happy rationalization of my experience whether the decision was a good one or a bad one it's going to look good to me way down the road that is to say that the speaker is revealing a characteristic alas about human nature is that given a choice between thinking well of ourselves or not we will think well of ourselves we will even if it comes to it bend the facts somewhat so that our understanding of ourselves is a positive rather than a negative one the reason I say that is that that is to say that those last two lines rather than affirming nonconformity might be revealing a capacity for rationalization or even self-deception on the part of people has to do with something distracts me that most people have not focused on that is the title of this poem this is not about the road that the speaker has taken the title is the road not taken' what's on this person's mind at the present moment of this poem looking back to a decision that he made not too long before is a terrible sense of what if I have made the wrong decision it's a sense of equivocation us and and even more than that it strikes me that one could very easily speak to this issue could it be that indecision and equivocation lead in a psychological sense inevitably to the kind of rationalization that we find at the end of this poem is there a cause and consequence it looked at carefully in this poem which is suggesting something about the fallible human nature that we have always to try to think best of ourselves when in fact we're least certain of our values but what I find astounding about this I mean surely however you want to look at the ending of that poem the clear thing that remains is that the final two lines are not supported by but rather denied or contradicted by the poem that precedes them what I'd like to leave you with is I since I was trying in this particular short time to make a point about Robert Frost the man and Robert Frost's poetry what I'd like to leave you with is this parallel surely what we now understand from Robert Frost's biographies is that the gentle grandfatherly New England farmer who spoke apparently so affirmative ly and in such simple language about American values had a darker underside in his personal life and that he spent a good part of his public life in some sense masking or holding down or at least disguising that darker underside as an illustration of that we turn to the road not taken' surely I said one of his most popular poems and I mean that in both the best and now in a different sense that is to say a poem which has been popularly interpreted in one fashion but a close reading of the poem reveals a darker undecide a darker depth that most people have passed by and in an odd way it might be particularly appropriate that the road not taken' this most popular of poems is exactly parallel to Robert Frost this most popular of poets all right I'll leave you there today

Channel: Ithaca College

Views: 293,927

Keywords: murphy, english, frost, poetry

Id: a5140uJOUDE

Length: 23min 46sec (1426 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 29 2008