Journey is definitely made up from challenges and hardship and through facing those challenges and hardship, one is able to move forward. There are two type of journey called physical journey and inner journey. Physical and inner journeys can result in people gaining new insights, understanding themselves and the world around them. This can be seen in Leunig’s cartoon ‘How to Get There’, the book cover ‘ the ties that bind’ and Peter Skrzynecki’s poem ‘Crossing the Red Sea’. ‘ How to Get There’ by Leunig is about a traveller’s physical journey to “an end” even it does not exist.
It includes six frames of cartoon images in series that is presented as a metaphor of life. Then, in each images, the caption is added such as “ Go to the end …gate”, “ Go through the gate…horizon” ; the repetition of the word “ Go” is used like an instructions to order the traveller follow it, give him confident and encourage him not to wait to start a journey of life. The gate in the cartoon is also recognized as the symbol of a decision to go to the journey. After going through the gate, it is still not the end; the traveller has to find the answer for the question “How to get there”.
However, “there” is not somewhere. It is nowhere, anywhere or maybe not exist and the traveller needs to “keep on going”. And through facing all those challenges, the traveller learns that the world around him is big and he is small but he would become bigger and stronger after passing challenges. Another text that relates to the idea of journey is the book cover ‘ the ties that bind’. ‘ the ties that bind’ is a book about six unknown Australian share their journey as they return to their homeland to find their family and culture.
It has been presented in the book cover by using some language techniques. First of all, the tittle “ the ties that bind six journeys of a lifetime” is written in lower case letters to create informal tone and brings the readers closer to the book. Also appearance of the picture on the book cover brings the ease of imagination about the content of the book. The series of six real pictures allow the characters share their unexpected joys and heartbreakingly poignant moments as family meets family for the first time.
In the addition, the photos and the stamps in the background convey the evidences of their memorable journeys back to the places where they belong in the world. Finally, the poem ‘ Crossing the Red Sea’ describes the migrant experience while they were on the ship leaving their homeland to Australia. The migrant experiences hardship on the boat is seen in the structure and language techniques. The structure has 5 parts to reflect 5 different days of the speaker’s journey. Then, metaphor is involved to bring out the feelings of the migrant.
For instant, “…themselves a landscape” is a metaphor that shows the heat, the poverty and the closy packed bodies on the ship. Another metaphor is “ Voices left their caves” conveys their freedom to speak out loud; by the way, the “cave” is the image of dark and deep place, which shows the horrible conditions experienced by the migrants on this journey. Not only the metaphor is used, the speaker also uses personifications of highlighting the central idea, the sea, such as “ the kindness of the sea…. ” and “(And the sea’s breath…. ”. The wall of sadness was never disclosed but the sea helps the migrants to share it.
Moreover, the sea is the symbolism of the start of new life and carried the migrants to a new land. Through those techniques above, it creates a visual image of a physical journey with the miserableness and difficultness of the migrants. In the conclusion, these texts have raised a very important step in journey: whenever you face with challenge and hardship, you can move forward. By showing the different types of journey, physical and inner, the main character in any situation at a strange country or trying to go back home) seem to accept the hardship or challenge in order to moving forward.
