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What might 'the road' symbolize?
The conversation about the road, journey, and inn works on multiple levels. One could chose to see it as literal, but it also works as a metaphor for any kind of journey, be it physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual. On its grandest scale, it works as a metaphor for the journey of life, which must end in death, and the resulting afterlife that Rossetti believed in. In this reading, life is compared to a long, up-hill journey with a long road obscured by its winding nature. It also indicates by virtue of it being a road that it has been travelled before - it is a prescribed way. This could indicate not just a life journey, but a life...
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