William Street Journey

The journey can mean a multitude of different things such as a physical journey or intellectual journey with it having a distinguishable beginning and end. The concept of the journey can be explored many different way as can be seen through the discussed texts of into the wild, William street and the night ride. The Into the wild movie, and the two poems William street along with night ride have a very different way of displaying the concept of the journey. although all three texts explore this concept extremely well one does stand out above the rest.
The movie “into the wild” is a true story about the journey of Christopher McCandless; (Alexander Super tramp) who gave up all his possessions, money and chance at a very prosperous career. While …show more content…
In his poem “William Street” Slessor takes the reader on a journey through king’s cross using sensory imagery; describing the sights, sounds and smells of the Sydney night life in kings cross. Some of the sensory imagery Slessor uses in the first stanza is the description of a red globe light, which identifies this area as the red-light district setting us up for the description of criminals and low lives associated with it. These low lives are described in stanza five as dips and moles (pickpockets and prostitutes), displaying to the audience the kind of place William street Is to attract such characters. This is especially apparent in the second to last line “ranging the pavements of their pasturage” implying this is where they ply their trade and that this is their home”. In the second stanza Slessor describes trousers that are in a pawn shop window dangling eerily so to give the audience a sense a spine chilling feeling that would be felt if walking down this street. Slessor also used sensory imagery to describe the smells you would come across on a journey through William street. Slessor using alliteration describes the smells of a what seems to be a fish and chip shop; for example, “smells rich and rasping, smoke fat and fish and puffs of paraffin that crimp the nose”. In this poem Slessor’s purpose is to take the audience on a journey through a place typically …show more content…
The journey that Slessor explores in this poem is that of life and its inevitable end, this makes for a very dark theme throughout the whole poem. One example of metaphor is the use of powerful verbs “lumbering, hooked, groping clumsily and dragged”; which are used to great effect in describing the struggle that life can sometimes be. Another metaphor is that of “the night-ride starts again”; used to relate how repetitive life is and the fact that this is an unavoidable matter of life. One of the prominent metaphors used in this poem is “soon I shall look out into nothing but blackness” which represents the dark theme embedded throughout this poem; that theme being the inevitability of life and death or ‘the journey”. This metaphor is a direct link to death and the nothingness that Slessor believes lies after it as well as the use of “soon” implying that there is no avoidance of this fact. An example of metaphor is also seen in the second to last line that reads “Nothing but grey, rushing rivers of bush outside” relating to how as we go through life issues outside of own seem trivial and blend into one. The night ride is quite possibly the best display of the concept “journey” throughout Slessor’s poetry as the metaphors so obviously riddled through it can be interpreted in many ways by many people. For example, this poem can be interpreted as the