The Road Not Taken – Basic Understanding Questions​

1. The speaker arrives at two roads diverged in a forest. Diverged means:

2. The traveler could not see where the road was going because:

3. What is the undergrowth?

4. “In leaves no step had trodden black”. What does this phrase mean?

5. Frost describes one of the roads as “just as fair”. What does fair mean?

6. Who are the passing Frost refers to in the second stanza?

7. Frost writes that the second road “wanted wear”. What does he mean?

8. How does the speaker feel about the choice he has made?

9. What is NOT true about the road the traveler chooses?

10. What is a sigh?

11. “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back”.  What does the speaker mean by these lines? He means that  (-)

12. “I shall be telling this with a sigh”. What does the word “this” refer to?

13. Frost ends the poem: “and that has made all the difference”. What does the word “that” refer to”?

14. What literary device does Frost use throughout the poem?

15. What literary device does Frost use when describing the road that “wanted wear”?

16. How is the last stanza different than the first three stanzas?

17. What is the setting of the poem?

18. What is the main theme of the poem?

19. What is the message of the poem?

20. What does the sigh in the last stanza mean?