Journey to the Interior (1 Viewer)

[Gemstone]

Hi everyone,

We've been looking at this poem (journey to the interior) in class for the last couple of days and I just can't get my head arround it. I know it's supposed to be about depression or something and I can sort of see that but I don't really understand the poem.

Oh yeah and does anyone know what "your shoe stuck in the brambles under the chair wherre it shouldn't be" (sorry if that's not the exact wording.) is supposed to mean. No one seems to really know. After sittting down in english today trying to figure it out I managed to come up with it being about trying to take every at the same time instead of in little steps but I don't know if that's right.

Anyway this poem is really confusing for me and I'm sure it is for others so I thought it would be good if people could post there interpretations of the poem or a section of the poem here to help us all out.

Gemma

 

[iluvbyrnsie]

Hi,
I think the poem is about a journey into the mind. the composer has constructed the text in a way that physical journey is metaphorical for the imaginative/inner one.

The composer is journeying into the mind, and the poem is bascially saying that this particular journey can be very difficult, as it is isolated and you may find things you don't want to or that scare you (hence "but only some have returned safely"

I think the quote: "your shoe amoung the brambles under the chair" suggests something that has been in her mind for a long time ( brambles are like a prickly plant i think, and growing under the chair perhaps suggests that the chair has been there for a while.) This is significant as the composer is exploring her mind, and you know how sometimes you know things or you hear what people say and you don't absorb it or take notice and it doesn't mean anything to you... well i think the chair represents her discovery of something in her journey that she had known but now makes sense of or she now realises she needs to take more notice of. maybe i don't know.

I also think the poem is an interior monologue, she is talking to herself, "a sentence crossing my path" might mean that she remembered something someone said.

Overall yeah it is a pretty depressing poem, but i think it makes some important points about journeys being fraught with obstacles and sometimes difficult, and that sometimes personal growth and achiveing greater understanding of self can be difficult.

 

[Gemstone]

Thanks for the help. You'ce got some different interpretations of some of the lines to me although I don't think either interpretation is wrong.

Anyway I thought "a sentence crossing my path" could represent the repetitiveness of daily life and how there is very little change in routine. I think I thought of this because the line before is "lucent mushrooms and a paring knife." Which i think represents the domestic tasks in life.

Well that's what I think of it. Does anyone else have any other ideas on the poem. I think it will help to see other interpretations of the poem.

Gemma

 

[clerisy]

I've been thinking of those lines on the knife, mushroom shoe etc along the same lines as Gemstone-- symbols of domesticity. Therefore it then provides another link between the physical world and the world of Atwood's mind, and also shows how her inner journey has just become another routine element of her life-- its present in her everyday life... it is, essentially, a fact of (her) life.

 

[olay]

Mm......i took it as a fear of discovery. *runs upstairs and grabs poem* ahh okie dokles, yeah i thought the poem was largely based upon a. the unpredictability of the mind, and extent of power self discovery can have on someone - with its ability to inflict danger.
b. a fear of learning things about yourself that you'd just rather not face. e.g. "....but that I move surrounded by a tangle of branches, a net of air and alternate light and dark, at all times; that there are no destinations apart from this". its as though she's trying to claw her way out of the branches [dark - (negative connotations..i took it as being the negative/dark side of her)] into the light. and that "dark place" is where "many have been" "but only some have returned safely".. to me meaning that they've gone and seen so much craptasticy in them that they can't get past it and linger, wallowing in their faults. sorry if this doesn't make sense i'm kinda half asleep but can't physically shut my body down :S