Journey to the interior

This poem is written in free verse and presents a multi-dimensional exploration of the concept of journey. Some read it merely as a description of a physical journey that describes the early exploration of the Canadian interior, but to do so is to ignore the many complex shades of meaning that are also present. Atwood’s layered approach allows her to explore and delve into hidden recesses of landscape that are physical and metaphysical in nature. Her mental wanderings take her on a quest to discover the meanings associated with identity and nationhood. This offers access and insight into the poet’s mind and soul.

The reader is guided into a private and unexplored world, evocatively described via symbol and imagery that is rich with unexpected meaning. Atwood provides the signposts for our ‘journey’ into her ‘interior’ by references to geographical and personal surroundings. Negative connotations imply that this inner terrain represents a heart of darkness’, an inner sanctum of the soul. Atwood shows that within the darkness of her mind, there is a ‘vacant wilderness’ where words are ‘pointless’, as no one can hear you scream. Vulnerability increases, for like

. . .
The rhetorical device of assonance, found in the long vowel sound in the words, ‘shoe’, ‘lucent’ and ‘mushrooms’ is offset by the somehow jarring yet ‘normal’ image of the paring knife on the kitchen table. The physical level can be maintained throughout, but so too can the secondary or netal level which is much more evocative. Confusion, doubt and determination to ‘keep my head’ are the emotional results of the poet’s travels. It has the natural pauses and hesitations of natural speech, achieved by semicolons, colons, rhetorical questions, brackets and staggered structure.

Style

The poem is written in first-person narrative using a modern, free-verse structure.

Poetic Features

Similes and recurring motifs are used to allows Atwood to chart the main links and discrepancies between the multi-dimensional journeys explored within the poem. Real life journeys cannot be translated into the one-dimensional format of her map. The first lines talk of a time when it was first ‘discovered’ and opened up as fresh terrain to be explored and exploited. The distant hills that are welded shut by perspective open up into broader vistas as we approach. This process offers guidance and reassurance and the use of first person narrative shows that it has informed her perceptions of self and her world. Very few poems can be read on such fundamentally separate levels. This idea is then further extended as she travels deeper still into the inner recesses of the mind itself, perhaps mankind’s most unexplored region.

This reading becomes clearer in the second stanza as we travel into the ‘interior’ of the poem. This is not discerned until the traveller can approach it more closely and look carefully. Ideas are presents in a stream of consciousness via flow-on lines that allow one idea to fuse and develop into another.

Common topics in this essay:
Motif Superficially, Features Similes, Atwood Overview, journey interior, , sodden fallen log, domestic world, sodden fallen, compass useless, physical journey, metaphysical world, confusion doubt, environment endless, physical metaphysical, fallen log,

Approximate Word count = 1468
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

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