Physical Journey - Peter Skrzynecki

Essay by Scrabbler28High School, 11th gradeA+, April 2014

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A physical journey is an opportunity to see new landscapes and have new experiences. A physical journey will always be accompanied by an inner journey by virtue of obstacles and challenges an individual encounters. Composers explore the concept of journeys in different ways through texts. Texts show a number of different techniques to convey, to the reader, their ideas about a journey and the impact that the journey being taken may have on an individual or group. In Peter Skrzynecki's poems, Immigrants at Central Station, 1951 and Crossing the Red Sea, the experience of physical journeying is repeatedly encountered with the immigrants fleeing wore-torn Europe. This idea of physical journeying has skillfully been captured and expresses an individual's perspective among the journey they undertake. 'Gallipoli', directed by Peter Weir in 1981, reinforces the journey of individuals as well as conveying the emotional change of state on the soldier's journey from Perth, Australia to Gallipoli, Turkey, which is a result from the individual's experience of events they face along their journey.

The idea of life is depicted through both Skrzynecki's poems and Peter Weirs film. The poem, Immigrants at Central Station, 1951 conveys a melancholy and dark atmosphere. The immigrants are on an emotional journey to Australia escaping wore torn Europe. These immigrants have left their lives behind and are on course for an unknown future. The powerful simile 'like cattle bought for slaughter' is a profound statement that expresses the composer's attitude towards the physical journey and further illustrates the gloomy and crowded conditions in which the out casted immigrants are faced with. This quote also gives a strong illusion to the holocaust themes inflicted by the Jews that expresses the emotions seen in the poem - despair, desperation and anxiety. Skrzynecki's insightful poem, Crossing the Red Sea...