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Margaret Atwood Journey To The Interior

Decent Essays

Journeys can be physical, metaphysical, imaginative or even unexpected, they are an essential part of human growth and development. However, journeys are not always an easy experience – they come at a cost. A metaphysical journey involves the exploration of the human potential allowing the individual to extend themselves not only mentally but physically and emotionally, such as in Margaret Atwood’s Journey to the Interior. The text is a subtle, multilayered, introspective construction, depicting the cost of the journey as an ongoing, forever changing process. The persona’s journey, through the extended metaphor of the Canadian landscape, is a geographical manifestation of the composer’s mind, highlighting the struggles and adversity involved with the cost of journeys. Atwood utilises the physical terrain of the world around her to parallel the physical and metaphysical aspects of the persona’s journey; “a cliff is not …show more content…

The movements of the sun are realistically used to calculate time and bearing, this recalls the naturalistic tone, returning the responder once more to the wilderness of the persona’s mind. It also depicts another burden of the journey, an infinity, without chronological order. “Words pointless as calling in a vacant wilderness” here the persona experiences the isolation and remoteness of her mind scape, cutting her off completely from all social interaction, adding another expense to the journey. Alone, physically and linguistically, verbal communication is futile invoking a sense of helplessness, words can no longer help her delve into her psyche, she must substantially navigate her mind

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