Choices are never easy-people face many of them in a lifetime. Some choices are clear while others are sometimes more difficult. The poem "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost is a first person narrative tale of a monumental moment in the speaker's life. This idea in Frost's poem is the fork in the road, the decision between the two paths, and the speaker's decision to select the road not taken. "The Road Not Taken" was written in a time when Frost himself had to make a choice in life, and his daring decision to take the road not taken. .
Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco. His father was William Frost, a Harvard graduate who was on his way westward when he stopped to teach at Bucknell Academy in Pennsylvania for extra money. His mother, Isabelle Moodie began teaching math at Bucknell while William was there, and they got married and moved to San Francisco. They were constantly changing houses, and William went from job to job as a journalist. About a year after moving to San Francisco, they had Robert. They named him Robert Lee Frost, after William's childhood hero, Robert E. Lee. Frost's father died from tuberculosis at age thirty-four, in 1885. Isabelle took Robert and his sister back east to Massachusetts. Soon they moved to Salem, New Hampshire, where there was a teaching opening. Robert began to go to school and sit in on his mother's classes. He soon learned to love language, and eventually went to Lawrence High School, where he wrote the words to the school hymn, and graduated as co-valedictorian. Frost was then sent to Dartmouth College by his controlling grandfather, who saw it as the proper place for him to train to become a businessman. Frost read even more in college, and learned that he loved poetry. In 1912, at the age of 38, he sold the farm his father had passed to him and used the proceeds to take his family to England, where he could devote himself entirely to writing.