Journeys.

Journeys are rewarding experiences regardless of the end result is positive or negative. To what extent is this true based on your prescribed text and related texts of your own choosing.
Experiences from embarking on journeys are more invaluable than reaching the destination, as it allows us to grow and assists in our self-development. This notion is true to an extent based on the analysis of Robert Grays’ imagist poems “Going Back, On a Hot Night” and “Late Ferry”. Through poetic devices, Gray enriches our understanding of the concept of journeys and expands our knowledge. However, by contrasting “Late Ferry” with Hayao Miyazaki’s Japanese animation “Spirited Away”, coupled with “Going Back, On a Hot Night” and Nadia Wheatley’s picture book “Luke’s Way Of Looking” respectively, the differences and similarities challenge us to further evaluate the truthfulness of the given notion.
In a literal sense, “Late Ferry” dictates a story of a ferry departing from “beyond that narrow wood jetty” to travel into the “broad open harbour”. In a metaphysical sense, it is a journey from childhood to adulthood as the ferry struggles in the vast water. We can understand that in order to enter into the macrocosmic world, we must abandon our safe haven, connoting the idea that people   do not like to change to establish a journey. The ferry’s struggle is evident through personification and simile as it “feels nervously about in the blackness…like hands after the light switch”. The visual imagery of the “neon redness…down in the water” is symbolic of upcoming danger for the ferry as the readers can already sense that it is already in the dominance of the city. Gray is establishing that as we get closer to the destination, we will face an obstacle that can have a negative impact upon us. This idea is embodied within the text because the ferry is ‘lost soon in the blizzard of light’. The ferry is negatively impacted from its journey through the simile “small as a moth” which represents...