"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

A strange turn of events has found me helping a single 6th grader with her opening days of school. No problem: I can do a little of this and that.

So, leafing through an English book I was delighted to see Frost's "The Road Not Taken" (not that I'm a big Frost fan but because it was a poem that everyone is somewhat familiar with, right?).

Long story short: I read it aloud to her and then she read it again to herself and answered some questions. In grading the questions (multiple choice), I kept thinking: Do they really understand this poem, and isn't it more complicated than what they say? They didn't and apparently it is. It isn't about "individuality" and "forging your own path," and apparently the big stumbling block is the last two lines: "I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."

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.