A Roadside Stand — Class 12 MCQs with Answers

Key concepts: A Roadside Stand (Class 12 English)

Robert Frost's poem on the rural poor who set up a stand at the roadside and are ignored by the traffic that passes. It moves from the stand and its modest plea, through the indifference and irritation of the city folk, to a bitter attack on the 'greedy good-doers' who claim to help them, and ends with the poet checking his own despairing thought.

Robert Frost

Robert Frost (1874-1963), an American poet who wrote about characters, people and landscapes, and about human tragedies and fears. Known also for 'Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening', 'Birches' and 'Mending Walls'.

The setting

'The little old house was out with a little new shed / In front at the edge of the road where the traffic sped' — poverty placed directly in the path of wealth.

What the stand does NOT ask

'It would not be fair to say for a dole of bread.' This is not begging; the distinction matters for any question on the poem's sympathy.

What it does ask

'some of the money, the cash, whose flow supports / The flower of cities from sinking and withering faint' — a share of the money that keeps cities alive.

The goods

Wild berries in wooden quarts, 'crook-necked golden squash with silver warts', and 'beauty rest in a beautiful mountain scene'. ('quarts' = bottles or containers; 'squash' = a gourd.)

The polished traffic

'The polished traffic passed with a mind ahead' — the cars are shining and their occupants' thoughts are already elsewhere.

The city folk's complaint

Not the poverty but the look of it: they are 'out of sorts / At having the landscape marred with the artless paint / Of signs that with N turned wrong and S turned wrong'.

What really hurts the poet

'The hurt to the scenery wouldn't be my complaint / So much as the trusting sorrow of what is unsaid' — the unspoken, patient hope is worse than the spoilt view.

The greedy good-doers

'greedy good-doers, beneficent beasts of prey' — two contradictions in one line, exposing the double standards of those who 'help' the rural poor by resettling them.

Benefits that harm

The poor are to live 'Where they won't have to think for themselves anymore'; the benefits are 'calculated to soothe them out of their wits', and teaching them to sleep by day destroys 'their sleeping at night the ancient way'.

The childish longing

The stand waits all day 'in almost open prayer / For the squeal of brakes' — but of 'all the thousand selfish cars that pass', the ones that stop want to turn around, ask directions, or buy petrol.

The ending

The poet admits it would be a relief 'To put these people at one stroke out of their pain' — then, back 'into the sane', asks how he would like to be put gently out of his own.