Physical Journeys have the power to challenge our thinking.
How have the texts you have studied presented this concept?
Journeys, whether they are physical, emotional or imaginative, confront our minds with psychological obstacles. Physical journeys, as a combination of all three variations of journeys pose as the extension of personal boundaries by forcing the traveler to contemplate issues or questions that had not previously arisen.
Throughout many centuries, composers have combined these personal experiences with forms of creative and intriguing stories. Such a composer is Peter Skrzynecki. In his poems “Immigrants and Central Station”, “Crossing the Red Sea” and “Feliks Skrzynecki”, Skrzynecki has used personal experiences to demonstrate that physical journeys have the power to challenge our thinking.
“Immigrants at Central Station” is a poem depicting the uncertainty about the future. The tone is full of fear. “Families stood / With children at their sides”. This quote strongly alludes to feelings of fear, and a need to protect, as they fearfully contemplate what awaits them.
Skrzynecki uses many language techniques to illustrate the fearful tone and tense, anticipating atmosphere. Such techniques include similes (“…Like Cattle bought for slaughter”, “Like a word of command”), personifications (“Time waited”, “Space hemmed us against each other”) and alliteration (“…With dampness that Slowly / Sank into our thoughts.”)
The similes give strong allude to the Holocaust and the traumatizing concentration camps which were set up at the beginning of WW2. This intensifies the fear which the immigrants feel. It is in this way that this poem’s physical journey has the power to challenge our thinking - both the responders’ and the subjects’. As a responder, one may have been able to closely identify with the fear that the migrants share – because no ‘decent’ person would ever joyfully read about the dreadful Holocaust and the conditions in those camps.
“Crossing the Red Sea” is a hopeful poem. The title alludes to the biblical story in which the Israelites escaped from Egypt, resulting in liberation from slavery. With similar reference to the future as in “Immigrants at Central Station”, this poem looks to the future as the birth of a new life as the migrants’ journey from a period of constant fear and despair.
“Crossing the Red Sea” depicts the importance of keeping memories alive so as not to forget the good times. This is portrayed in the quote “Memories strayed / From behind sunken eyes” which illustrates that the migrants created friendships as, together, they reminisced the pre – war years.
This poem portrays that physical journeys have the power to challenge our thinking for the travelers, because the migrants were forced to realize that no matter how hard the situation they were previously in, hope still remains.
“Feliks Skrzynecki” is a poem describing the effects the journey from Skrzynecki’s homeland has had on him and his father. In this poem, Peter learns a lot about how prejudice people can be towards migrants who they feel do not belong anywhere else but where they came from. This is portrayed by the rude way in which a desk clerk asks Peter “Did your father ever attempt to learn English?”
However, Feliks appears unfazed by this – as is displayed in the quote “Kept with the Joneses / Of his own minds making”. This indicates that Feliks evidently had his own standards and ideals, thus did not care what other people though of him. Yet this quote may also be an indication that the experience which he has gone through has created a sense of isolation from the rest of the world, though he feels at peace, and has accepted who he is.
In the last stanza, the journey taken is Peter’s. From watching his father interact with his Polish friends and from seeing what his father’s Polish heritage means to him, Skrzynecki realize that, while the Polish culture will always be strong in his family, Skrzynecki must learn to discover his own culture; and he chooses to tread in a different path to his father. Thus his father is forced to “like a dumb prophet / Watched me pegging my tents / Further and further south of Hadrian’s Wall.” This wall stands as a barrier; a barrier that has formed between father and son, which has resulted from this journey between cultures. Peter has assimilated; become part of this new culture, whereas Feliks is content to remain loyal to his Polish heritage. The metaphor effect in this poem is used to demonstrate that journeys have barriers and that we have to overcome them. Thus, for both of the subjects, this physical journey has displayed the power to challenge their thinking.
“The Road Not Taken” is a classic example of the combination of an intellectual and a physical journey, enhancing the idea that physical journeys have the power to challenge our thinking. The poem clearly depicts that any form of journey affects individuals at an intellectual level to a variable extent. This poem depicts the significant role our decision – making ability plays in our lives. Robert Frost, the poet, has clearly outlined that our lives contain many unpredictable and unexpected twists and turns, and that it is us who decide on the direction we follow. But the point Frost makes is that we cannot travel in both directions.
The road in this poem is evidently a metaphoric expression for life. The poem expresses that journeys can lead to self satisfaction, self discovery and may also lead to the pursuit of dreams. Journeys, as the first stanzas imply, may hold elements of regretful situations, but as the poem also expresses, at the end of the ‘road’ we can only turn back and decide whether the decision has “made all the difference” in a positive or negative way.
This poem represents that in life there will come times when one will be forced to make choices, such as which direction to take – a choice which will often result in different responses. The persona in this poem represents initial regret. Such can be seen in the quote “And sorry I could not travel both.” Choices are an inevitable part of life, and will usually determine one’s future path. The traveler in this poem is confronted with such a decision and the title portrays that people will often choose “the one less traveled by” to add a challenge in their life.
The novel “The Starthorn Tree” by Kate Forsyth tells the tale of a fictitious physical journey undertaken by six companions who must journey deep into the Perilous Forest to seek counsel from the Erlune. They are on a journey in search of the truth about unsolved matters in their Kingdom.
Out of all of the characters in this novella, it is Lady Lisandre who appears to benefit the most from the physical journey. At the beginning of the text, this character was impressed on us as a snobbish, conceited princess, with a narrow view of life. However, by the end of the text responders view her as a matured adult. This is eminent in a comment she makes to a servant “…everything’s not right in the world…I’ve seen a lot…and I never knew…” This quote portrays that physical journeys do often result in giving the traveler a better understanding of life, and can often result in a change in personality; but even more – so, it illustrates quite clearly that physical journeys have the power to challenge our thinking.
In conclusion, these texts have showed that many physical journeys have the power to challenge our thinking. This, in a large majourity, is due to the fact that journeys present many obstacles, and they also present the traveler with difficulties which will often affect the traveler’s future. The journeys in all of these texts have identified, furthermore, that any form of journey affects individuals at an intellectual level to a variable extent.
