Can you relate this to journeys? (1 Viewer)

[BIGTYMA]

The Survivors

I never told you this.
He told me about it often:
Seven days in an open boat – burned out,
No time to get food:
Biscuits and water and the unwanted sun,
With only oars’ wing beats for motion,
Labouring heavily towards land
That existed on a remembered chart,
Never on the horizon
Seven miles from the boat’s bow.

After two days song dried on their lips;
After four days speech.
On the fifth cracks began to appear
In the faces’ masks; salt scorched them.
They began to think about death,
Each man to himself, feeding it
On what the rest could not conceal.
The sea was as empty as the sky,
A vast disc under a dome
Of the same vastness, perilously blue.

But on the sixth day towards evening
A bird passed. No one slept that night;
The boat had become an ear
Straining for the desired thunder
Of the wrecked waves. It was dawn when it came,
Ominous as the big guns
Of enemy shores. The men cheered it.
From the swell’s rise one of them saw the ruins
Of all that sea, where a lean horseman
Rode towards them and with a rope
Galloped them up on to the curt sand.




Post ur relation thoughts about this poem referring to emotional journey.

 

[idling fire]

Technically, everything can be related to journeys.
This text does have some hope, though I feel it lacks depth.


land as the ultimate physical goal
additional psychological experience - depression, emptiness
until destination reached (change in physical location and resultant emotional alteration)

Seven days -> religious connotations, creation etc.
repetition of the 7
bird, horseman -> saviour figure, hope -> saved by faith

begins narrative style, personal tone "I, you"
then taken to impersonal isolated location of ocean

It remains at this distanced tone for the remainder of the text, and therefore lacks the intimacy of say, Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Very focused upon objects and physical actions rather than emotional, but negative connotations do give insight into state of mind.

You could say a bit about the metaphors and alliteration, but I don't find them particularly inspiring.