Comprehensive Study Guide: Literature of Travel, Quests, and Transportation
Frameworks of Travel, Quests, and Travel Writing in Literature
Literature contains two foundational, twinned narrative motifs: a person goes on a journey, and a stranger comes to town. In world literature, the traveler becomes the stranger upon arrival, while the arriving stranger has completed a journey of their own. Examples include Gilgamesh wandering in search of immortality, Odysseus battling to return home to Ithaca, and Adam and Eve departing the Garden of Eden hand in hand at the conclusion of John Milton's Paradise Lost.
Erich Auerbach's Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946):
Written in exile in Istanbul, Turkey, where the Jewish-German philologist took refuge from Nazi persecution of Jewish academics, cut off from Western research libraries and relying on a small personal collection and memory.
Auerbach revived the classical Greek term mimesis ("imitation")—originally debated by Plato (who viewed artistic imitation as a dangerous illusion) and Aristotle (who viewed art as a path to understanding reality)—to analyze how literature represents reality across centuries.
Contrast between Homeric and Biblical styles through two foundational journey narratives:
Homer's Odyssey: Focuses on the moment the disguised hero Odysseus returns to Ithaca and is recognized by his old nurse Eurycleia by a scar on his thigh (also recognized by his faithful dog, Argos, who dies shortly after). The storytelling style is luminous and horizontal, fully illuminating background, foreground, thoughts, and motives without ambiguity or unspoken depth under a bright Mediterranean sun.
Genesis (Akedah): Focuses on God ordering Abraham to take his son Isaac to Mount Moriah to sacrifice him. The storytelling style is obscure and vertical, shrouded in mystery and silence, omitting inner thoughts, backgrounds, and feelings, leaving meaning deep beneath the surface for interpretation.
Taxonomy and History of Quest Narratives:
A quest narrative is an archetypal story structure featuring three consistent elements: a hero, a goal, and a challenging journey to reach it, resulting in meaningful protagonist transformation.
Chronological spectrum of literary quests:
Epic of Gilgamesh (Anonymous, c. 2000 BCE): King Gilgamesh quests for immortality following the death of his friend Enkidu; exemplifies arrogant ancient heroism.
The Odyssey (Homer, 8th century BCE): Odysseus's decade-long return quest home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.
Beowulf (Anonymous, 8th–11th century): Beowulf quests to destroy monsters and a dragon to protect his people.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Anonymous, 14th century): Gawain seeks the Green Knight to submit to a return blow, serving as a model of chivalric integrity.
The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas, 1844–1846): Edmond Dantès pursues an elaborate, dark quest for revenge after wrongful imprisonment.
Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad, 1899): Marlow travels up the Congo River to locate missing ivory trader Kurtz, creating a psychological descent into the human psyche (criticized for its colonial depictions of Africa by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe).
The Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkien, 1955): Humble hobbit Frodo Baggins carries the One Ring to Mount Doom, using geography to contrast pastoral beauty with industrial brutality.
On the Road (Jack Kerouac, 1957): Narrator undertakes cross-country drives across 1950s America in pursuit of experience, glorifying counter-cultural freedom.
The Reivers (William Faulkner, 1962): Lucius Priest (accompanied by Ned McCaslin) undertakes a comic quest relying on street smarts rather than physical virtue.
The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989): Butler Stevens takes a motor trip across England that produces deep psychological and emotional transformation.
The Three Types of Literary Transformation:
Geographical Transformation: Uses dramatic shifts in location and extreme or uncanny environments to generate narrative momentum (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, What Did You Do During the Revolution, Grandma? by Joanna Russ).
Ethical Transformation: Centers on testing, revising, and transforming the protagonist's moral beliefs and values (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Shōgun adapted from James Clavell).
Existential Transformation: Focuses on a changed understanding of identity, purpose, and self-definition within the universe (Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner).
The Bildungsroman (Coming-of-Age Narrative): Integrates geographical, ethical, and existential transformations simultaneously as a young protagonist matures (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro).
Aesthetics and Politics of Travel Writing:
Historical role: Prior to photography and broadcast media, travel writing was the primary medium through which readers encountered foreign cultures.
Genres: Practical guidebooks (focused on destinations, transit, and cultural norms) vs. aesthetic/philosophical accounts.
Judith Hamera and Alfred Bendixen identify two broad strands: writing as an autobiographical project (inward self-understanding) vs. writing as documentation of a specific place or society (external record).
Travel writing is "constitutive" rather than purely "mimetic"—it actively constructs and creates the image of the place it purports to describe.
Key Theoretical Concepts:
Edward Said's Orientalism (1978): Demonstrates how European writers constructed false, exoticized, hypersexualized, and passive images of Middle Eastern and Asian cultures to justify Western dominance.
Mary Louise Pratt's "Contact Zones": Social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and wrestle, often under highly asymmetrical conditions of power and coercion.
Representative travel works:
Walden (Henry David Thoreau, 1854): Autobiographical inward journey at Walden Pond meditating on solitude and simplicity.
South (Ernest Shackleton, 1919): External record documenting the 1914–1917 Antarctic expedition, the wreck of the Endurance, and survival.
The Wonder of England (Jane Symons): Fictional seven-volume travel guide used by Stevens in The Remains of the Day.
Wild (Cheryl Strayed, 2012): Autobiographical solo hike of the Pacific Crest Trail as a quest for self-understanding after personal loss.
On the Plains of Snakes (Paul Theroux, 2019): External observation of Mexican landscape, society, and people.
Kazuo Ishiguro and The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro Biography and Literary Career:
Born November 8, 1954, in Nagasaki, Japan. Mother survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki as a young woman. Father Shizuo Ishiguro was an oceanographer.
Moved to Surrey, England (near Guildford) in 1960 at age 5 when his father was invited to work at the National Institute of Oceanography. The family kept Japanese culture alive at home, expecting a return to Japan that never materialized.
Attended Stoughton Primary School and Woking County Grammar School. Aspiring singer-songwriter in his youth inspired by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.
Attended the University of Kent (graduated 1978 in English and Philosophy). Worked with homeless populations in London and social services.
Completed his MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in 1979–1980 under Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter.
Early Japanese-focused novels:
A Pale View of Hills (1982): Follows Nagasaki bombing survivor Etsuko living in England; won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize.
An Artist of the Floating World (1986): Narrated by compromised wartime propaganda painter Masuji Ono; won Whitbread Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
The Remains of the Day (1989):
Drafted in a 4-week intensive period called "the Crash," where Ishiguro cleared his schedule with his wife Lorna MacDougall to stay completely inside Stevens's voice.
Influenced by Tom Waits's song "Ruby's Arms," specifically the moment Waits sings his heart is breaking, which inspired Ishiguro to break Stevens's emotional defense at one specific moment.
Published by Faber and Faber; literary agent Deborah Rogers. Won the Booker Prize in 1989.
Adapted into an 8-time Academy Award-nominated Merchant Ivory film in 1993, directed by James Ivory, adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, starring Anthony Hopkins (Stevens) and Emma Thompson (Miss Kenton).
Subsequent works: The Unconsoled (1995), When We Were Orphans (2000), Never Let Me Go (2005; film adaptation 2010 by Mark Romanek, screenplay by Alex Garland), Nocturnes (2009), The Buried Giant (2015), Klara and the Sun (2021). Film projects: The Saddest Music in the World (2003), The White Countess (2005), Living (2022 screenplay adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru, nominated for an Oscar).
Nobel Prize in Literature (2017):
Awarded by Swedish Academy Permanent Secretary Sara Danius, praising Ishiguro for uncovering "the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world."
Acceptance lecture: "My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs," detailing accidental breakthroughs (discovering Nagasaki writing at East Anglia, reading Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past while sick in 1983, hearing Tom Waits in 1988).
Detailed Chronological Chapter Summaries of The Remains of the Day:
Prologue, July 1956: Darlington Hall:
Stevens, head butler of Darlington Hall, plans a 5-to-6-day motor trip to the West Country (Somerset, Devon, Cornwall).
Darlington Hall was sold after two centuries in the Darlington family to wealthy American Mr. Farraday.
Farraday offers Stevens the use of his Ford motor car and promises to foot the bill for gas while he returns to America for five weeks.
House staff has been reduced from 28 to just 4 (Stevens, Mrs. Clements, and two housemaids). Stevens experiences staffing lapses and designs a "staff plan."
Miss Kenton (now Mrs. Benn), former head housekeeper who left 20 years ago in 1936 to get married, sends a letter hinting at marriage troubles and nostalgic memories.
Stevens consults Mrs. Jane Symons's fictional 7-volume guidebook series The Wonder of England.
Farraday teases Stevens about a "lady-friend," introducing the recurring motif of "bantering," which Stevens struggles to comprehend or reciprocate.
Day 1, Evening: Salisbury:
Stevens departs Darlington Hall late after checking locks in the empty estate.
Takes an unfamiliar road curving along a hillside, feeling he has crossed a boundary into a wilderness.
Encounters a white-haired man who recommends climbing a path for the best view in England; Stevens climbs it to prove his vitality and sees Salisbury church tower.
Stays at a Salisbury guesthouse where the landlady mistakes him for a grand gentleman and upgrades his room.
Meditates on the English landscape: argues its greatness lies in "restraint," lacking the unseemly "demonstrativeness" of American or African scenery.
Defines professional "dignity": rejects the Hayes Society's requirement of a "distinguished household" and Mr. Graham's view that dignity is innate. Defines dignity as a butler's refusal to abandon the professional being he inhabits.
Relates 3 stories regarding his father, William Stevens:
Colonial India Tiger Story: A butler delicately obtains permission to shoot a tiger under the dining table and clears all traces before dinner.
Drunk Guests Incident: William Stevens stops a car to silently intimidate two drunk guests ("Mr. Smith" and "Mr. Jones") into apologizing for insulting his employer, Mr. John Silvers of Loughborough House.
General Boer War Incident: William Stevens professionally serves the military general whose reckless tactics caused the death of his eldest son, Leonard Stevens, during the Second Boer War (1899–1902).
Day 2, Morning: Salisbury:
Stevens reflects on Miss Kenton's letter, specifically her memory of William Stevens pacing outside the summerhouse as if looking for a "precious jewel he had dropped there."
Recalls spring 1922: Miss Kenton arrives as housekeeper at the same time William Stevens is hired as under-butler. Initial friction over pantry flowers, calling William by his first name, a left dustpan, silver polish lapses, and swapped Chinese figures in the billiard room.
March 1923: William Stevens collapses on the lawn carrying tea (diagnosed by Dr. Meredith as overworking). Lord Darlington hosts an unofficial international conference to revise the Treaty of Versailles reparations imposed on post-WWI Germany, prompted by the suicide of his friend, German officer Herr Karl-Heinz Bremann.
Conference attendees: Lord Daniels, John Maynard Keynes, H. G. Wells, co-architect Sir David Cardinal, French delegate M. Dupont, American Senator Lewis.
Stevens is tasked with explaining the "facts of life" to Sir David's 23-year-old son, Reginald Cardinal, but fails.
During the conference, William Stevens suffers a fatal stroke upstairs. Stevens prioritizes serving port to delegates and applying foot bandages to M. Dupont. When informed of his father's death by Miss Kenton, Stevens continues working, viewing the night with a large sense of professional triumph.
Day 2, Afternoon: Mortimer's Pond, Dorset:
Reframes the Hayes Society's requirement into a moral concept: contrasts the older generation's "ladder" model (hierarchy/aristocracy) with his generation's "wheel" model (serving employers who form the moral hub of history, such as Mr. George Ketteridge, Lord Wakeling, Lord Camberley, Sir Leonard Gray).
Car engine smells of burning; fixed by a former military "batman" (servant to a Colonel).
Stevens explicitly denies to the batman that he ever served Lord Darlington, claiming he only served Mr. Farraday.
Sits by Mortimer's Pond and recalls lying similarly to American guest Mrs. Wakefield at Darlington Hall, which angered Mr. Farraday.
Day 3, Morning: Taunton, Somerset:
Stays at the Coach and Horses inn outside Taunton. Attempts a witticism with local farmers that fails.
Details his efforts to practice bantering: listens to radio show Twice a Week or More and formulates three jokes daily.
Sees sign for Mursden (home of Giffen and Co., makers of silver polish). Recalls silver polishing standards established by butler Mr. Marshall, praised by Lady Astor and George Bernard Shaw.
Recalls polishing silver for British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax prior to a secret meeting at Darlington Hall with Nazi Ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop.
Defends Lord Darlington against charges of antisemitism and connections to Sir Oswald Mosley's fascist Blackshirts.
Day 3, Evening: Moscombe, near Tavistock, Devon:
Details the 1932 firing of two Jewish housemaids, Ruth and Sarah, instructed by Lord Darlington under the influence of fascist Mrs. Carolyn Barnet. Miss Kenton protests the firing as a "sin" and threatens to resign, but Stevens briskly executes the dismissal. Miss Kenton later admits her failure to resign was "cowardice."
Firing leads to hiring Lisa, whom Miss Kenton trains into an exemplary maid before Lisa elopes with a footman.
Present: Stevens runs out of gas in Moscombe and stays with retired grocers Mr. and Mrs. Taylor.
Deep memories of relationship breakdown with Miss Kenton: the pantry book scene (where she discovers him reading a sentimental romance novel), the abrupt termination of their evening cocoa talks, and his cold, task-oriented response on the day her aunt died.
Moscombe evening: Villagers (George Andrews, Trevor Morgan) mistake Stevens for a high-class lord. Local activist Harry Smith argues that dignity belongs to every free citizen who fought against Hitler's tyranny, contrasting with Stevens's view.
Dr. Carlisle gives Stevens a ride back to his car the next morning.
Stevens recalls a 1935 incident where Mr. Spencer used him as a prop to prove lower classes are ignorant of economics, justifying anti-democratic views. Stevens admits for the first time that Lord Darlington's life work was "a sad waste."
Day 4, Afternoon: Little Compton, Cornwall:
Waits in the Rose Garden Hotel dining room before his 3:00 PM meeting with Miss Kenton.
Dr. Carlisle uncovers that Stevens is a manservant; Stevens defines dignity as "not removing one's clothing in public."
Deep memory of a critical night in 1936:
Miss Kenton informs him she accepted a marriage proposal from Mr. Benn; Stevens responds with cold professional congratulations.
Simultaneously, a secret meeting occurs between Ribbentrop, the British Prime Minister, and Foreign Secretary. Reginald Cardinal arrives, warning Stevens that Darlington is being manipulated by the Nazis as a tool for appeasement.
Stevens refuses to intervene or express curiosity, remaining in his professional role.
Remembers standing outside Miss Kenton's parlor door, convinced she was crying inside, but turning away to serve wine to Nazi diplomats, viewing this suppression as the peak of professional dignity.
Day 6, Evening: Weymouth:
Reaches the seaside town of Weymouth; sits on the pier waiting for colored lights.
Recalls the two-hour reunion with Miss Kenton at the Rose Garden Hotel tearoom. Miss Kenton's marriage is intact; she has a daughter, Catherine, and a grandchild on the way.
At the bus stop, Miss Kenton admits she left her husband three times because she imagined a better life with Stevens. Stevens confesses in his narration: "at that moment, my heart was breaking," but utters only polite wishes for her marriage.
On the pier, Stevens converses with a retired butler who tells him "the evening's the best part of the day." Stevens breaks down in tears, admitting he gave his best years to a misguided master and failed to make his own mistakes.
Softens his perspective, resolves to practice bantering for Mr. Farraday to pleasantly surprise him upon his return.
Detailed Character Profiles:
Stevens: Protagonist and unreliable narrator. Highly disciplined, emotionally suppressed, obsessed with butlering "dignity." Entrusts his moral judgment to Lord Darlington, resulting in a wasted personal and moral life.
Lord Darlington: Title aristocrat of Darlington Hall. Well-meaning, honorable, but politically naive and easily manipulated by Nazi figures like Joachim von Ribbentrop. Fires Jewish maids, supports appeasement, and dies disgraced.
Miss Kenton (Mrs. Benn): Head housekeeper at Darlington Hall. Warm, capable, morally clear-sighted. Protests the firing of Jewish staff. Offers Stevens repeated opportunities for personal intimacy, which he rejects.
William Stevens (Stevens's Father): Old-school head butler who serves as Stevens's primary role model for rigid self-control and professional subordination. Dies of a stroke during the 1923 conference.
Mr. Farraday: Wealthy, easygoing American owner of Darlington Hall in 1956. Introduces democratic informality, lends Stevens his Ford car, and encourages him to banter.
Mr. Reginald Cardinal: Son of Sir David Cardinal and godson to Darlington. A passionate political columnist who uncovers Nazi manipulation of Darlington and unsuccessfully begs Stevens to intervene.
Harry Smith: Passionate, democratic Moscombe local who argues that real dignity belongs to all free citizens, acting as an ideological foil to Stevens.
Herr Karl-Heinz Bremann: WWI German officer whose post-war poverty and suicide inspire Lord Darlington's political campaign against the Treaty of Versailles.
Herr Joachim von Ribbentrop: Nazi Ambassador to Britain who exploits Darlington's aristocratic standing to bypass the Foreign Office and influence British elites.
Ruth and Sarah: Competent Jewish housemaids dismissed from Darlington Hall in 1932 solely due to their religion.
Lisa: Unqualified maid hired by Miss Kenton to replace Ruth and Sarah; trained into an excellent servant before eloping with a footman.
Mr. Spencer: Elitist aristocrat who uses Stevens to argue against democracy.
Mr. Benn: Former butler at Granchester Lodge who marries Miss Kenton; eventually earns her genuine love.
Catherine Benn: Miss Kenton's daughter, whose impending grandchild confirms Miss Kenton's settled family future.
Key Analytical and Historical Contexts:
Unreliable Narration: Concept coined by Wayne Booth (The Rhetoric of Fiction, 1961) and expanded by James Phelan and Kathleen Wall. Stevens's unreliability manifests in self-deception, misinterpreting Miss Kenton's affection, rationalizing moral failures, and editing his past.
Bantering: Represents human connection, emotional reciprocity, equality, and warmth that Stevens stripped from his life in favor of professional rigidity.
World War II Contexts: The failure of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), appeasement policy, the Munich Agreement (1938), Neville Chamberlain, and Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists ("Blackshirts"). Connects to Hannah Arendt's concept of the "banality of evil" (Eichmann in Jerusalem, 1963), wherein ordinary people execute evil by abdicating personal thought to authority.
Shorter Selections in Literature
John Steinbeck, Selections from Travels with Charley (1962)
Author Biography:
Born February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. Attended Stanford University intermittently from 1919 to 1925 without earning a degree. Worked as a ranch hand, fruit picker, and laborer.
Literary works: Cup of Gold (1929), Tortilla Flat (1935), In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), The Grapes of Wrath (1939, won 1940 Pulitzer Prize). Expeditions and nonfiction: Sea of Cortez (1941, with marine biologist Ed Ricketts), A Russian Journal (1948, with photographer Robert Capa), East of Eden (1952).
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. Died of heart disease on December 20, 1968, in New York City.
Textual Analysis of Travels with Charley: In Search of America:
Account of a 10,000-mile, 34-state road trip undertaken in 1960 in a custom-built GMC pickup truck named "Rocinante" (after Don Quixote's horse) accompanied by his French poodle Charley (Charles le Chien).
Dual motivation: personal (rejuvenation after a stroke, defying medical advice) and professional (re-engaging directly with the country rather than writing from memory).
Route: Encompasses New England, the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, California, and the American South, culminating in witnessing white women shouting racial slurs at 6-year-old Ruby Bridges during the desegregation of a New Orleans elementary school.
Critical literary concepts:
Rhetorical bias: Poses as a disinterested recorder ("peripatetic eyes and ears"), but narrative is heavily colored by personal nuclear-age anxiety (e.g., overlaying a New Hampshire farmer's small talk about unpredictable weather with fears of atomic bombs).
Synecdoche: Uses individual encounters to represent the entire nation, creating sweeping generalizations.
Literary Cartography: Lowell Wyse's term for travel writing as a non-neutral mapping process. Journalist Bill Steigerwald (2010) retraced Steinbeck's route, discovering widespread fabrication, chronological impossibilities, and altered timeline events.
Audre Lorde, "The Fourth of July" (1982)
Author Biography:
Audrey Geraldine Lorde born February 18, 1934, in New York City to Grenadian and Barbadian immigrant parents. Legally blind in childhood. Dropped the 'y' for visual symmetry.
Studied at the National University of Mexico (1954), earned a BA from Hunter College (1959) and an MLS from Columbia University (1961).
Key Poetry Collections: The First Cities (1968), From a Land Where Other People Live (1973, National Book Award nominee), Coal (1976), The Black Unicorn (1978).
Key Prose Works: The Cancer Journals (1980), Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982, coined the term "biomythography" to describe its blend of history, biography, and myth), Sister Outsider (1984, containing "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House"), A Burst of Light (1989 American Book Award).
Spent time in Berlin fostering the Afro-German women's movement and in Saint Croix (taking the name Gamba Adisa). Named Poet Laureate of New York State in 1991. Died November 17, 1992.
Textual Analysis of "The Fourth of July":
Autobiographical travel essay detailing a 1947 family train trip to Washington, D.C., as an 8th-grade graduation present for Lorde and her sister Phyllis.
Explores Jim Crow racial segregation: Lorde's mother packs a "mobile feast" (roast chicken, brown bread, green peppers, rosewater washcloth) to avoid segregated dining cars, attributing the exclusion to cost and hygiene rather than racism.
Climax at Breyer's ice cream parlor on Pennsylvania Avenue: A white waitress refuses counter service ("I kin give you to take out, but you cant eat here. Sorry."). The parents and sisters react with silent endurance and pretense, whereas Lorde experiences intense anger ("a like fury").
Lorde writes a letter of protest directly to President Harry S. Truman, using the nation's democratic rhetoric (poems on Bataan and freedom) to hold the country accountable.
Concludes with pervasive imagery of oppressive whiteness: white waitress, white counter, white ice cream, white heat, white pavement, and white stone monuments.
Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken" (1915)
Author Biography:
Born March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, California. Moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1885. Attended Dartmouth and Harvard briefly.
Farmed in Derry, New Hampshire (1900–1909). Lived in England (1912–1915), publishing A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914). Friend to Edward Thomas, whose indecisiveness during countryside walks directly inspired "The Road Not Taken."
Won four Pulitzer Prizes (New Hampshire, West-Running Brook, A Further Range, A Witness Tree). Recited "The Gift Outright" at John F. Kennedy's 1961 inauguration. Died January 29, 1963.
Textual Analysis of "The Road Not Taken":
Published in The Atlantic Monthly (1915) and opened Mountain Interval (1916).
Form: Four 5-line stanzas (quintets) with an ABAAB rhyme scheme, composed primarily in iambic tetrameter.
Popular Misreading vs. Actual Meaning:
Popularly misread as a triumphant celebration of individualism and nonconformity based on the final lines ("I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference").
The text explicitly states that both paths were "really about the same" and equally covered in un-trodden leaves. The speaker anticipates that ages hence he will construct a self-justifying narrative with a sigh, claiming he chose a less-traveled road because humans cannot know the true path not taken.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798)
Author Biography:
Born October 21, 1772, in Ottery St. Mary, Devon. Attended Christ's Hospital and Jesus College, Cambridge. Briefly enlisted in the army as Silas Tomkyn Comberbache.
Planned a utopian communal settlement ("Pantisocracy") on the Susquehanna River with Robert Southey. Co-authored Lyrical Ballads (1798) with William Wordsworth, launching British Romanticism.
Studied philosophy (Kant, Schelling) in Germany (1798–1799). Developed severe opium addiction. Authored Biographia Literaria (1817), defining the primary imagination. Lived under care of Dr. James Gillman in Highgate. Died July 25, 1834.
Textual Analysis of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:
A 7-part framed narrative in ballad measure (4-line stanzas, alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter, ABCB rhyme scheme, incorporating archaic diction).
Plot trajectory:
Outer frame: The Mariner detains a Wedding Guest on his way to a feast.
Journey: A storm drives a ship south to ice. An Albatross arrives as a good omen, guiding the ship. The Mariner impulsively shoots the Albatross with a crossbow without motive.
Curse: The ship enters a windless, scorching sea ("As idle as a painted ship / Upon a painted ocean"). Sailors hang the dead Albatross around the Mariner's neck. A ghost ship arrives carrying Death and Life-in-Death, who gamble with dice; Life-in-Death wins the Mariner. All 200 crewmen fall dead, cursing him with their eyes.
Redemption: Surrounded by corpses, the Mariner observes water-snakes in the moonlight and blesses their beauty "unaware." The Albatross falls from his neck into the sea.
Return and Penance: Aided by dead crewmen reanimated by blessed spirits, the ship reaches his home harbor and sinks in a whirlpool. Rescued by the Hermit, the Pilot, and the Pilot's boy. The Mariner must wander continuously, compelled by recurring agony to retell his tale.
Moral: "He prayeth best, who loveth best / All things both great and small."
George Orwell, "'As I Please': 12 May 1944"
Author Biography:
Eric Arthur Blair born June 25, 1903, in Motihari, India. Father worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service. Attended Eton College. Served in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma (1922–1927) before resigning out of anti-imperialist conviction.
Prose and Nonfiction: Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), Burmese Days (1934), The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), Homage to Catalonia (1938, detailing his service in the POUM militia during the Spanish Civil War, where he was shot in the throat).
Late Totalitarian Masterpieces: Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949, written on the Scottish island of Jura while dying of tuberculosis). Died January 21, 1950.
Textual Analysis of the Tribune Essay:
Argues against the popular idea that modern transport and radio have abolished distance and opened the world. Asserts that the modern world has become vastly more closed, nationalistic, and restricted.
Historical contrast: Prior to 1914, European travelers required passports only for Russia and could migrate freely to America or Australia. By 1944, borders were fortified with barbed wire, machine guns, sentries, visas, and legal internments (e.g., Regulation 18B in Britain).
Specific examples: Closed borders of Soviet Asia, Tibet, Sinkiang, and the Japanese Empire; total exclusion of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution ("nowhere for them to go").
Communication and Economics: Radios are confiscated, jammed, or turned into closed nationalistic propaganda chambers. Scientific autarchy (synthetic rubber from oil, atebrin replacing quinine) allows nations to achieve economic self-sufficiency, eliminating mutual dependence.
Elizabeth Bishop, "Questions of Travel" (1965)
Author Biography:
Born February 8, 1911, in Worcester, Massachusetts. Father died in infancy; mother was permanently institutionalized when Bishop was 5. Raised by grandparents in Nova Scotia and relatives in New England.
Graduated from Vassar College (1934), where she co-founded Con Spirito. Mentored by Marianne Moore. Inherited financial independence.
Lived in Key West and Brazil (15 years in Petrópolis and Rio de Janeiro with partner Lota de Macedo Soares).
Major Poetry Collections: North & South (1946), A Cold Spring (1956 Pulitzer Prize), Questions of Travel (1965), Complete Poems (1970 National Book Award), Geography III (1976). Died October 6, 1979.
Textual Analysis of "Questions of Travel":
Two-part structure addressing the ethics and aesthetics of travel, set in Brazil.
Part 1: Raises the case against travel, noting an excess of landscape ("too many waterfalls"), and quoting Blaise Pascal's argument that human unhappiness stems from an inability to sit quietly in one's room. Asks whether travel is greedy ("must we dream our dreams and have them, too?").
Part 2: The volta ("But surely it would have been a pity…") presents the defense of travel through detailed visual and auditory particulars: exaggerated trees, wooden clogs clacking over a filling station floor, a fat brown bird singing above a broken gas pump, a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque, rain like politicians' speeches, and sudden golden silence.
Concludes with the constraints of geography and human existence: "Continent, city, country, society: / the choice is never wide and never free." Turns doubt away from travel toward the elusive nature of "home, wherever that may be."
Henry David Thoreau, "Walking" (1862)
Author Biography:
Born July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts. Family ran a pencil-making business. Graduated from Harvard College in 1837. Founded Concord Academy with his brother John.
Core figure in Transcendentalism alongside mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Bronson Alcott.
Lived at Walden Pond (July 1845–September 1847), producing Walden (1854). Spent a night in Concord jail in 1846 for refusing to pay a poll tax in protest of slavery and the Mexican War, producing the essay "Civil Disobedience" (1849). Died of tuberculosis May 6, 1862.
Textual Analysis of "Walking":
Origin: Originally delivered as a lecture titled "The Wild" in 1851; published posthumously in The Atlantic Monthly in 1862.
Etymology of "Sauntering": Links the word to medieval pilgrims walking à la Sainte-Terre (to the Holy Land) or landless vagantics sans terre (at home everywhere).
Core Thesis: "In Wildness is the preservation of the World." Opposes indoor, commercial, civilized town life (mechanics and shopkeepers sitting all day) to absolute freedom and wildness.
Directionality and Manifest Destiny: Internal compass needle always points between west and southwest ("I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe"). Frames westward migration as an instinctual, evolutionary drive (Ex oriente lux; ex occidente frux — "From the East light; from the West fruit").
Complicity in Settler Colonialism: Explicitly states that the European farmer is right when he "displaces the Indian" to "redeem the meadow."
Concepts: Gramatica parda ("tawny grammar," untamed wild knowledge), the necessity of a "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance," and a visionary experience on Spaulding's Farm viewing an invisible, noble family living in the pine woods.
Goli Taraghi, "The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons" (2013)
Author Biography:
Born Zohreh Taraghi-Moghadam in Tehran, Iran, in 1939. Father Lotfollah Taraghi ran Taraghi magazine. Studied philosophy at Drake University in Iowa and taught at the University of Tehran.
Published debut short story collection I Am Che Guevara in 1969. Exiled to Paris following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, living as a diasporic writer between Paris and Tehran.
Major Works: Scattered Memories (1992), Two Worlds (2002), co-wrote the 1998 film The Pear Tree with Dariush Mehrjui. English collection The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons published in 2013.
Textual Analysis of "The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons":
A modern airport quest narrative exploring displacement, international migration, and foreign exile.
Plot: An Iranian narrator flying Air France from Tehran's Mehrabad Airport back to Paris is detained at security over an Isfahan decorative souvenir battle axe, which official Mr. Parrot treats as a murder weapon.
Meets 83-year-old Anar Banu Chenari ("The Pomegranate Lady") from a village near Yazd. Anar Banu is illiterate, speaks only Persian, has never flown, and is traveling to Gothenburg, Sweden, to reunite with her two exiled sons.
Anar Banu's luggage is packed with pomegranates, rice, fabrics, and eggplants to cook fesenjan for her sons (one political and angry, the other musical and sweet-talking).
At Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, the narrator helps the stranded, non-English-speaking Anar Banu navigate transit using a luggage trolley. Anar Banu gifts the narrator a "pomegranate of love."
Dark, unresolved ending: Three days later in Paris, the narrator finds Anar Banu's connecting Paris-to-Gothenburg ticket still inside her own pocket, realizing the illiterate old woman was left stranded in the airport system without her ticket.