The traveler is the main character as well as the speaker in Robert Frost's " The Road Not Taken." The traveler is an older man who in his previous years had come to a fork in the road during the autumn season. There are two paths for the traveler to choose from when he comes to the fork, and he must choose one of the paths to take. He decides to take a path that appears to be less traveled because there is grass that has grown around the path from where it has been undisturbed. He says that he will travel the first path another day, but he doubts he will ever come back. He chooses the less traveled path as though he were doing it a favor by traveling on it. He says at the end of the poem that the path he chose made all the difference. The main theme to the poem is the ability for a person to have choices and make decisions in life.
            
             The poem is thought to have been written about Frost's friend Edward Thomas, an English poet, who later was killed at Vimy Ridge in World War I. Thomas was notorious for his indecisiveness. Frost showed his poem to Thomas and was disappointed when Thomas did not understand that the poem had been written about him.
            
             The poem had originally been written in italics so that it would imply introduction and farewell. Frost began writing it on a stormy winter night in England and did not finish it until two years later in 1916. He warned his readers that it was a tricky poem. "Frost's warning showed that he hoped his readers could come to see its satirical intention, which he evidently never cared to explain" (Marcus 64). The popularity of the poem was mistaken to represent the celebration of independent choices. His final point to the poem was to show the ability to make a choice is a triumph over the circumstances.
            
             The traveler has two different paths to choose from in the poem. Each path represents a direction opposite of the other direction. The...