Class 12 English — Chapter 12: A Roadside Stand

What you'll learn

• ▸The Plight of the Rural Poor
• ▸Urban Apathy and Indifference
• ▸Critique of False Benefactors
• ▸The Unfulfilled 'Childish Longing'
• ▸The Poet's Empathetic Pain
• ▸The Promise of a Better Life
• ▸Economic Disparity: City vs. Country
• ▸Robert Frost's Poetic Style

Chapter Summary

--- PAGE 1 --- 25KM 12074CH13 4 A Roadside Stand About the poet Robert Frost (1874-1963) is a highly acclaimed American poet of the twentieth century. Robert Frost wrote about characters, people and landscapes. His poems are concerned with human tragedies and fears, his reaction to the complexities of life and his ultimate acceptance of his burdens. Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, Birches, Mending walls are a few of his well-known poems. In the poem A Roadside Stand, Frost presents the lives of poor deprived people with pitiless clarity and with the deepest sympathy and humanity. Before you read Have you ever stopped at a roadside stand? What have you observed there? The little old house was out with a little new shed In front at the edge of the road where the traffic sped, A roadside stand that too pathetically pled, It would not be fair to say for a dole of bread, But for some of the money, the cash, whose flow supports The flower of cities from sinking and withering …

Practice Questions from this Chapter

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1. Explain roadside stand businesses. Get Solution →
2. Discuss rural economic challenges. Get Solution →
3. Describe poet's feelings for farmers. Get Solution →
4. According to the 'About the poet' section, who is the author of the poem 'A Roadside Stand'? Get Solution →
5. What product was offered for sale in 'wooden quarts' at the roadside stand? Get Solution →
6. Besides berries, what other vegetable was sold at the stand? Get Solution →
7. How does the poet describe the paint on the signs at the roadside stand? Get Solution →
8. What did the roadside stand pathetically plead for? Get Solution →

Did you know?

• 💡 Ancient Romans set up small stalls along their famous roads to sell goods.
• 💡 Strawberries are not technically berries; botanically, bananas are actual berries.
• 💡 Squash was one of the first crops ever cultivated by humans, over 10,000 years ago.
• 💡 Before coins, salt was sometimes used as money, even giving us the word 'salary'.
• 💡 Many of the world's oldest roads were originally animal migration paths, later used by humans.

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