Two+Paths+Diverged+in+a+Yellowed+Road

Two Paths Diverged in a Yellowed Road By Steven Shen

The lego figure in the shoebox represents a human being on the journey of life. His current path is hilighted as a yellow road, which is a reference to the Wizard of Oz's yellow brick road. However, life is obviously not at all as simple as simply following a florescent path. This is emphasized by the presence of the train. If a train runs over a human being, it can cause death, which most would probably consider a sizeable problem. Of course there is not an actual train threatening to injure the man, but it is instead symbolizing the complications in life that force us to make a compromise. The symbolic train itself is being powered by a symbolic top which represents the continuity of life (adding a new perspective to the phrase "time waits for no one").

Seeing as a train, also known as inevitable demise, is headed steadily towards the man, the man is forced overcome this complication. He can either select the left path or the right path. The left hand path is a natural life which has random twists and turns as well as its straight parts (both of which are represented by the structure of the funspoon). The car on this path indicates that this path is a genuine "journey of life", and the board game piece mounted upon it represents the presence of luck/chance in the journey. The presence of the green frog further emphasizes the naturality of this path. At the end of this journey, one arrives in a period of calm and relative stability. This is shown on the fun spoon at the end of the spoon which is the part one would normally use to scoop things up. While its bowl shape provides a measure of isolation from the happenings of the outside world, it is also shallow enough to allow for personal change as well as awareness of the environment.

On the other hand, the right hand path is constricted from the very start, forcing one to crawl through a blue tube which symbolizes the limits of this path of life. The tube prevents the traveller from seeing any sights along the way, effectively severing them from the events of usual life. While this allows the human to avoid complications and therefore life an arguably happier life, this also detracts from the overall richness of life simply by depriving the human of the opportunity to experience life as a whole. A metaphor for this style of life might be a person eating from a sampler platter. The person eats the victuals that appear attractive to him/her and leaves the rest alone. After exiting the tube, a sort of contraption is seen. This contraption is convering a Raichu into a simple yellow marble. This symbolizes the fact that this path will result in the simplification of uniqueness into a generic form. All of this very much fits into a factory-like theme, which is very much an unnatural process. The mechanical foot in the vicinity also adds to the artificial theme of this path.