The concept of journeys can vary from person to person; literally a journey is a progression, either physically, mentally or spiritually. Journeys come under five main titles, inner, spiritual, imaginative, emotional and physical. Practically all texts contain one or a combination of these journeys. Les Murray, an Australian poet, has a very strong concept of journeys throughout his poems. Through the use of such techniques as figurative language and film a composer can express their individual concept of journeys. Les Murray’s poem “Widower in the Country” is a mixture of a physical and emotional journey which traces a mindless, daily routine of a grieving widower. Les has presented his idea that a physical journey can mask a deep …show more content…
From the physical journey of driving through a town the reader will experience a second journey, a spiritual journey when they oversee the lives of the people within the town. The composer utilizes a 2nd person perspective to engage his audience and hopefully take them on the same physical and spiritual journey. He uses personification such as “The houses there wear verandas out of shyness” to give the audience a sense of the community and set a harmonizing tone. I believe this poem really captures Les Murrays hypothesized concept of journeys, as it’s much deeper than a simplistic drive. Melissa Hamilton, a journalist for the Australian newspaper recently wrote an article tilted This (Transplanted) Life, which is a physical, inner and spiritual journey. It is a recount of her journey home, it’s written in first person to personalize her journey and evoke mood and tone with her audience. The composer uses juxtaposition to compare the city to her country home, “When we arrive I stumble with soft city feet over the gidgee stones” and to compare the people of the city and country “the quite is loud enough to keep them up at night.” Through her thorough description of the country surroundings and the lifestyle of the people that live there, she takes us on a spiritual journey of her hometown. The composer also uses creative language such as exaggeration, repetition, alliteration, personification and a metaphor to establish her love and knowledge of
As Murray describes the life of a sawmill person and in general anybody who lives in a rural region. He acts as a voice for them as society grows in urban towns and many forget there are people who live in rural areas and that they live two completely different lifestyles. As from the poem you drive into the town “without haste” then after observing the town “You speed away through the upland” showing the person in the car obviously from a city area completely stunned and feels alien in the
Journeys can include those that are physical, mental or inner and are often accompanied by challenges that can change the individual mostly for the better. Journeys are taken for many reasons, some are taken from choice and others are compulsory. A journey can be lone or be accompanied. The outcomes of journeys may shape the individual as a person.
In the Robert Frost poem ‘’The Road Not Taken’’ there is a pervasive and in many ways intrinsic sense of journey throughout. In such, the poem explores an aspect associated with human decision, or indecision, relative to the oxymoron, that choices with the least the difference should bear the most indifference, but realistically, carry the most difficulty. This is conveyed through the use of several pivotal techniques. Where the first such instance is the use of an extended metaphor, where the poem as a whole becomes a literary embodiment of something more, the journey of life. The second technique used is the writing style of first person. Where in using this, the reader can depict a clear train of thought from the walker and understand
This first stanza from the poem, explains the journey of a man driving through a sawmill town and his observations. Murray describes his journey through a small sawmill town in New South Wales whilst using strong, vivid imagery and emotive language.
A physical journey brings inner growth and development from the experiences a person encounters from a physical transition from one place to another. All physical journeys include obstacles and hardships however they also involve emotional and spiritual journeys along the way. Peter Skrzynecki’s poems “Postcard” and “Crossing The Red Sea” are both examples of an emotional journey within a physical journey. A feature article ‘A Desert Odyssey’ reported by Sue Williams and Robert Frost’s poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ also involve emotional journeys within a physical journey.
Journey is an act of travelling from one place to another which can be seeking permanent home in a different country or travelling in the same country. It can affect different people in many different ways as they get emotional, intellectual and imaginative experiences individually in their life. All of these have been explored in some of Bruce Dawe’s meaningful poems ‘migrants’ and ‘drifters’ and a related text ‘Still Life’ which is a short film by Martin Sharpe. The poem ‘migrants’ was about group of European migrants seeking permanent home in a completely different country to escape from war and have better standard of life but the poem ‘drifters’ was about a family journeying in the same country. In comparison, the short film, ‘Still Life’ is about a man who has boring and meaningless life. The composers employ poetic and film techniques to convey the possible positive and negative ramifications of journeys.
Mark Strand’s poem, “Poor North” depicts the life of a married couple facing countless struggles during a harsh winter. It tells of a man working in an unsuccessful store while his wife sits at home, wishing for her old life back. The way the wife copes with her sadness is both intriguing and perplexing. She misses her old life, even though it is described to have not been special; however, the wife may be a person who never feels satisfied or fulfilled by the external world due to internal conflict. Despite the wife’s obvious misery, she stays by her husband’s side and they stroll in the cold together, bracing the wind. As a means of escape from life, she peers into her past in order to find hope in the present.
The definition of a journey is: “A traveling from one place to another, usually taking a rather long time.” (dictionary.com). However, most modern novels have characters that go through emotional or mental journeys that serve as the main plot for their story, thus contradicting the meaning of the word “journey”. In older works of literature such as The Odyssey by Homer and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, it is more common for the protagonists to step into physical journeys that are often made to signify an important lesson or meaning by the end of the novel. Factors such as symbols, themes, and character change plays a role in helping the characters along on their adventures and adds to the connotation of the whole story.
Poems can be interpreted in many ways; however, every reader has their preference. One interpretation of “The Journey” is that it is a story about battling depression. The
When speaking of the journey one is speaking of an act in which the mind or the body are going through a vigor of change and an instance of importance. The journey, whether literal or figurative, is a thing that could impact life, reason, and even passion for what one holds dear. Such as a woman realizing that medicine is their calling or a man having a roller coaster of emotions during their daily viewing of their favorite television show, a journey can be anything and at any level of life, but always an instance of importance.
Frost writes this poem with a calm and collective narration, spoken by the traveler, who is talking with himself trying to decide which road is the better choice. In line one Frost introduces the diverging roads, which are his main metaphors. Diverging being the key word in this line because it suggests that the traveler must make a choice. Line two the traveler expresses his grief of not being able to travel both. Yet, the choice is not easy, since "long I stood" (3)
Robert Frost's dramatic dialogue poem, "Home Burial," is the story of a short, but important, episode in the marriage of a typical New England farm couple. They are "typical" because their "public" personalities are stoic and unimaginative, and because their lives are set within the stark necessities of northeastern American farm life. Yet, they are also typical in that their emotions are those one might expect of young parents who have abruptly and, to them, inexplicably lost their baby. Although their emotions would not, one presumes, be openly displayed to the community, the poem's reader is privileged to view them personally and intimately through the small window opened by the poet.
Robert Frost’s dramatic poem Home Burial depicts two tragedies: the loss of an infant and the deterioration of a marriage that follows. The emotional dialogue characterizes husband and wife with their habits of speech, illustrating the ways that they deal with grief. Instead of comforting her in her distress, the husband attempts at every turn to force his wife to cease grieving. The unnamed farmer’s inability to console his wife, who seems to feel so much more deeply the loss of her child, combined with her inability to see any feeling at all in her husband’s actions, contribute to a conflict that seems unresolvable by the end of the poem. But Frost’s diction suggests that it is the husband’s style of communication, not his method of
Robert Frost's poem “The Road Not Taken” describes a traveler facing a choice, he can either choose the road not taken, or he can choose the road most traveled by. He does not know where either road might lead, but in order to continue with his journey, he can pick only one road. He analyses both roads for the possibilities of where each may take him in his journey. Frost's traveler realizes that regret is inevitable. Regardless of his choice, he knows that he will miss the experiences he might have encountered on the road not taken. Frost, uses literary elements, such as Denotation and Connotation, Symbolism, alliteration, consonance, and assonance in order to convey massage.
There is much more to this poem than its literal story. The title, along with the story itself, suggests man's overlook for nature. People seem to travel through oblivious to the consequences of their actions. The driver who killed the deer is an example of this theme. He was also traveling through the dark, as the deer was a "recent killing." The fact that he left it in the middle of the road, with no further thought for it or anyone else behind him, implies his dark nature.