Journeys Speech (Australian HSC English)

Essay by callisto06High School, 12th gradeA+, June 2006

download word file, 2 pages 4.3

As a famous American novelist John Steinbeck once stated, 'the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry'.

Many journeys reflect this reality as despite their best efforts to organise and plan for the 'perfect trip', travellers encounter circumstances that propel them into perhaps totally different directions. This is evidenced in Pierre Montana's immigration to Italy five years ago. Immigration is a one-way journey and immigrants are often presented with relatively more barriers to overcome than the average traveller. Whilst Pierre had made a logical, grounded decision to hone his violin-making skills in Cremona, he had not counted on the fierce familial responses with which he faced. It was when he revealed his plans to his family that he realised that there were indeed physical and emotional barriers to overcome. For one, his grandmother had exploded into a fit of tears and pulled him into a vicelike hug, one of the many tight situations from which he had to extract himself.

His family's initial distraught reaction reflects the upcoming separation which is an aspect of frequent travel, which brings me to how "everything works in theory". Likewise for journeys, the imagination is usually unhindered by physical barriers. Travellers often find themselves planning, planning and replanning. What for? It is an attempt to emulate a spectacular anticipated journey into reality whilst taking into account physical barriers. In the end, this holy grail of travelling is theoretically impossible as journeys are unpredictable. Pierre's flight to Italy alone was far from smooth. He had the works, turbulence, bad weather, a forced landing. Did he expect these to happen? Maybe, you know there is a chance of such incidences occurring within your relevance but you tend to think or at least hope that the chances are fairly slim. A schedule may be...