Author: j

TPSFASTT: “The Road Not Taken”

Title	A road the speaker chose not to go down / About a path not taken in life / Maybe the speaker took a path that not a lot of other people chose
Paraphrase	One road split into two in the woods / Speaker wanted to take both, but could only choose 1 / He’s by himself, has to choose / Looks down one path as far as he can until it turns and he can’t see it anymore / He picks the other path because it looks just as good / Seem better even because it’s less traveled; not worn / The walk over to the path is worn, but the path itself isn’t / It’s morning; both paths are covered in leaves / Speaker decides he will come back and try the other path some day / Realizes that his path will lead to other paths and realistically he won’t be back, won’t get to try the other path / Somewhere years down the road he’ll look back on the choice of path he made and sigh as he tells someone about it. / He took the less traveled path and it made all the difference in his life
Speaker	A traveler/wanderer/hiker / A man? (most women wouldn’t travel alone in the woods) / He has a big, life-changing decision to make / He’s at a crossroads in life; pensive; thinking about life
Figurative Language	The word “diverged” speaks to choice; anxiety (?) / “yellow” wood, symbolic of the season of Fall; possibly speaks to the age of the speaker (middle age) / Not a lot of figurative language in the poem / There are descriptions of the woods, but they don’t necessarily equate to imagery, lack sensory details / Symbolism: paths= choices/decisions we make in life; woods= the unknown / The poem itself is an extended metaphor for life, the choices we make that ultimately determine it