The Road We Travel On
We are all traveling down a road. A road towards something in life. Death? Maybe, our dream job or goal in life? Who knows? All we do know is that we are moving on this road sometimes we stop; sometimes we veer off, making a mistake. On this road there are different paths we can go on. Every decision, every choice we make can change our course. It’s all up to us to choose which road we go on.
Robert Frost, Stargirl, and Leo made choices that affected their lives and the lives of those around them. In the book Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, has two main characters, Leo and Stargirl. Both of them had to make hard decisions that changed the path they were traveling down, and for a time they were intertwined. Leo’s choices closely impacted Stargirl and what she did. Leo was asked by Archie’s (a man in the town who Leo goes to for advice and teaching.
) cactus Senor Saquaro “Whose love do you want more hers or theirs?” The question he was asking Leo was if he wanted to be with Stargirl and forget everyone else and their prejudice and just be with her. Or leave her and stay with his friends, stay popular, and not be with her. Whatever he chooses not only affects his path but Stargirls’s and maybe even the people around them too. Leo decided to stay with his friends, he took the easy road. Unlike Robert Frost in his poem ‘The Road Not Taken’. “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
” (Frost) He is saying that he knew the harder road was the one less taken by people; most people take the easy road like Leo. Frost knew in the long run taking the hard road would be what would change everything. For better or worse he didn’t know, he just hoped it would turn out well. Leo’s chice was the easy one for him, he chooses to ignore her to stay with his friends and stay noticed. Stargirl decides to try to be normal for him, to be something she’s not. She buys the clothes others wear and loses the personality that makes her her.
Leo choice sends her down a path she doesn’t like or enjoy. In the book Leo looks into her room where she has a jar of rocks. The more rocks in the jar the happier she is at the time. After her change back to Susan, she had only two rocks in the jar. She wasn’t happy with herself or the choice that she made. Leo, although, was happy with the change.
He told his friend Archie he thought it was a miracle. Archie replied “The trouble with miracles is they don’t last long” (42 Spinelli) He was right, they don’t because soon Stargirl realized trying to be “normal” wasn’t working for her, so she went back to herself and Leo went back to ignoring her. Leo had taken the easy path maybe if he had taken the harder path things would have turned out differently; maybe he would have been happier. The narrator to the Robert Frost poem knew he might regret the decision later in life but he took the chance, and it ended up leading down a different road in his life. When Leo made his choice bout Stargirl he set off a chain of events he didn’t expect to happen.
At first he was happy with his choice, Stargirl was normal; she fit in with his friends he no longer felt like an outcast. Then she changed back and he ignored her again, and he never got to see her again after the school ball. Soon after he began to regret his decision and he would for the rest of his life. He still thought about her so many years later and her impact was still with him. He still did the things she taught him like reading the fillers in the newspaper or dropping coins on the ground for others to pick up. His choice not only continued to affect him but the school and town he left behind.
His high school in Mecca was greatly affected by the certain things Stargirl did while she was there. They were the only school marching band with a ukulele, at basketball games a small section of students cheer for the other team when they score a goal, and a group of students started a club called the Sunflower Club. It’s a club where a small group of students do at least one act of kindness a day. Everything everyone does affects the world around them in either a big or small way, whether they know it or not. Both Leo and the narrator of ‘The Road Not Taken’ both had hard choices to make.
I think the narrator made the right choice because the road “less traveled by” (frost) or the harder road is the road that turns out right in the end. Also he says ” I doubted if I should ever come back” (Frost) I think he is saying that he doesn’t think he’ll regret his decision, so he won’t have to come back and try the other road. I think Leo made the wrong decision in the book. I believe this because he is still upset, thinking about her and regretting it 20 years later. While everyone else is moving on, he is still thinking back to her, and it’s like life is trying to tell him he screwed up, made a mistake and he needs to fix it.
Life is about the choices we make. They lead us down a road sometimes we don’t want to go down. So we go back, but even as we go back not everything is the same, but we can try to fix the mistakes we have made and move on. I think making decisions is one of the hardest things we have to do, because we don’t know which one will be the big one that will change the rest of our lives. Even if they are as simple as deciding on going into a random store and finding the love of your life, or eating a new food and finding out your allergic. We will never know which choice will be the big one, the one that will change everything, but I guess that’s a part of living.
