Choose Your Path

Choose a character with whom you identify from a novel or a short story you have read recently. Explain how you identify with this character, what lessons he or she has taught you, and how you imagine this knowledge will be helpful as you enter college.


One literary work that I always find inspiring is Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken". In Frost's poem the speaker, on the verge of making a decision, symbolizes this decision by using a reference to one road forking into two. Each road represents a possible decision. The speaker visualizes himself at this crossroad; he conveys his situation stating "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,/ And sorry I could not travel both/ And be one traveler" (Frost 1-3). "Sorry I could not travel both" clarifies that the choice, once made, cannot be reversed. The speaker further describes one road being less traveled than the other, insinuating that one decision is more popular than the other; "Then took the other, as just as fair,/ And having perhaps the better claim,/ Because it was grassy and wanted wear;" (Frost 6-8). The speaker also clarifies that nobody has made the decision lately, implying that there is no model to base his decision on: "And both that morning equally lay/ In leaves no steps had trodden black" (Frost 11-12). By stating "Oh, I kept the first for another day!/ Yet knowing how way leads on to way,/ I doubted if I should ever come back." (Frost 13-15) The...

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