Traveling Inward – Journey as Metaphor

Metaphor is most frequently employed as a literary device in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one article is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison. Journey serves as an effective metaphor because it can accurately portray many concepts from all walks of life without becoming vague. This feat is accomplished by utilizing the inherent characteristics of the word “journey” itself, as a journey can be representative of a process, physical travel, or any undertaking involving a goal. In Ariel Dorfman’s Heading South, Looking North, Michael Radford’s Il Postino, and Pablo Neruda’s “Walking Around”, the metaphor of journey manifests both as a process that the protagonists experience, and as an objective that they strive to reach. All three works under discussion have the process taking the form of physical travel, while the goal becomes discovering one’s true identity. These two interpretations of journey as a metaphor are inherently intertwined, and through careful analysis, we will see how these associations