Chapter 3: The Road Not Taken
After your SSC Exams/Result, you may have to take a decision regarding the choice of a career. What factors will you consider?
Choose from the block below and complete the web-diagram.
Is the option easy/difficult?
Your capability
Your likes/dislikes
Friends’ decision
Parents’ profession
Your skills/inborn talents
Study the ‘Job Profile’ carefully
Easy money
Possible difficulties
Your ultimate aim
SOLUTION
Form pairs or groups of four. Think of the situations when you have to choose between two things. Make a list of those situations. Some of them may be minor or trivial things - for example, what to wear when going out. Some choices may be related to important things, for example, having to decide between games and studies, whether to confront a close friend about something that he/she did, owning up to your mistakes, etc.
Discuss how to decide what to choose.
Write about what you feel when your decision proves right.
Write about what you feel when you regret the decision.
SOLUTION
Read the poem again. Does it have a uniform rhyme scheme throughout?
Write down the rhyme scheme of every stanza separately.
1st stanza ______
2nd stanza ______
3rd stanza ______
4th stanza ______.
SOLUTION
The poem has a regular rhyme scheme throughout.
1st stanza - abaab
2nd stanza - abaab
3rd stanza - abaab
4th stanza - abaab.
Write the symbol that is used in the poem to represent the following idea.
Choice of two options.
SOLUTION
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.
I made a rare choice.
SOLUTION
Then took the other, as just as fair.
Equally good options.
SOLUTION
And both that morning equally lay.
It was tempting and needed to be tried.
SOLUTION
Because it was grassy and needed to wear.
Some other time.
SOLUTION
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Rearrange the following facts in the proper order and fill in the flow chart.
He chooses the one barely travelled.
Choosing the lesser-used road has made a great difference.
He observed one, as far as he could.
The traveller came to a fork in the road.
He planned to travel along with the previous one some other time.
SOLUTION
Think and write in your own words.
In which season does a greenwood turn to a yellow wood? Which stage in our life can be compared to that season?
SOLUTION
Greenwood turns yellow during the autumn season. Old age can be compared to the autumn season because green leaves turning yellow signifies that life of the leaf is coming to an end similarly old age signifies a person is nearing the stage of death.
Why did the traveller choose the road less travelled? What attribute of the traveller does it bring out?
SOLUTION
The road less travelled means the road had not been used by many which may have forced the writer to take an experience which very few had taken. The Poet's decision of choosing the other roadshows that he is an optimist who is full of hopeful confidence, spark, and creative energy. He is a person who believes in magic and endless possibilities.
Why does the traveller doubt that he shall ever come back?
SOLUTION
The poet wants to convey that one decision leads to another and we seldom get a chance to change them.
If you were in the traveller’s place, which road would you choose? Justify your choice.
SOLUTION
I am a very enthusiastic person and would therefore like to travel through the unknown. I like adventure and would therefore like to explore the uncommon path as the poet did. Challenges are something that helps me judge my capabilities. I would like to venture into the path which has been less travelled and unknown to the rest of the world.
From any collection of classic poetry or the internet, find another famous poem by Robert Frost titled ‘Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening’. Try to understand the symbolism used in that poem in 8-10 lines.
SOLUTION
Robert Frost's poem 'Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening' symbolizes the journey of life and a movement towards death. Almost every single element in the poem in that sense is symbolic of something. The undefined traveller on horse-back reminds us of the knights of the Middle Ages in the course of a heroic adventure. The cold and the dead of night and the frozen lake in the woods, the 'darkest evening of the year' - all these elements build an ambience where the immanence of death is at odds with the indomitable spirit of love, as exemplified by the traveller.
The owner of the woods is referred to but his name has not been mentioned. This can be a reference to the mystic and almost unnamable presence of God. The oath of the traveller to go on come what may, keeping his promises before he has to submit to the final call of death, an eternal sleep of sorts. The end of the poem is thus replete with philosophical symbolism.
Write a letter to your friend or cousin telling him/ her about a difficult choice you have recently made, for example, pursuing one sport or hobby rather than the other or choosing between your studies and hobbies.
Tell your friend/ cousin how his/ her example helped you to make a decision.
______
______
______
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
______
_____
SOLUTION
Collect quotations on the topic ‘choice’. Example :
Present the quotations in a beautiful hand on card paper.
SOLUTION
Do it Yourself.
Balbharati Solutions for English Kumarbharati 9th Standard Maharashtra State Board
• Chapter 1.2: A Synopsis-The Swiss Family Robinson
• Chapter 1.3: Have you ever seen...?
• Chapter 1.4: Have you thought of the verb ‘have’
• Chapter 2.2: A True Story of Sea Turtles
• Chapter 2.3: Somebody’s Mother
• Chapter 2.4: The Fall of Troy
• Chapter 2.6: The Past in the Present
• Chapter 3.2: Reading Works of Art
• Chapter 3.3: The Road Not Taken
• Chapter 3.4: How the First Letter was Written
• Chapter 4.2: The Storyteller
• Chapter 4.3: Intellectual Rubbish
• Chapter 4.4: My Financial Career
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