Table of ContentsIntroductionTheme of Travel in LiteratureConclusionWorks CitedIntroduction“Life is a journey, not a destination. » This quote from 19th-century American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson describes how life's lessons, special moments, and difficulties will help everyone reach their life goal, their final destination. This message regarding a person's journey reaching their final destination is one of the underlying themes used in literature. The travel motif is one of the most used elements in American literature. The journey is a powerful symbol often used to represent a character's adventure leading to a revelation or some sort of self-realization. This literary device can be applied in the background, working invisibly alongside the plot, or it can comprise the entire plot itself so that all of the character's experiences are centered around the journey. There are a number of American works and writers spanning centuries who have applied this device to their characters. Three works of literature, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and The Road by Cormac McCarthy, use the travel motif to illustrate the mental and physical challenges and tribulations that the characters must experience. However, although all of these novels use a journey, the type of journey used is extremely varied. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayJourney Theme in LiteratureJourney is used to represent a mental or physical challenge, often intimidating, that the characters in question must overcome in the framework of their enlightenment is an integral part of their character development. Usually, journeys represent something missing in the protagonists' lives, so they leave their current situations to find the missing part of their character. Journeys can be literal, like those in The Road and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or introspective, like the journey in To Kill a Mockingbird. Physical travel is as its genre suggests: the character(s) must literally move from one area to another, regardless of their destination. However, it is not the literal act of movement through which the motif of travel exerts its symbolic meaning. Rather, the journey involves passing through unknown areas, and the characters must confront and resolve problems and difficulties encountered along the way. It is these attributes of a physical journey that cultivate a dynamic character by leading the characters to become aware, through introspection stimulated by the trials encountered during the journey, of a hidden or unrealized element in themselves or in those around them. as the title implies, the protagonists, named "The Man" and "The Boy", follow a path from the United States to the ambiguous "south" (McCarthy 7) after an unspecified cataclysm devastates the modern society and left these characters ostensibly among the few survivors on the planet. However, the sudden, apocalyptic reduction in population does not protect them from the prospect of danger, as nomadic groups of cannibals roam the scorched lands. The Man and the Boy must constantly work to defend themselves against these groups while searching for food and resources to refill the dwindling supplies in their shopping cart (McCarthy 3). The reason for their physical journey is obvious: they lack security in their current situation, and even if their situationseems desperate, no matter where they go, they hope that they can find refuge and safety by looking for them. In this case, the author makes no note or allusion to a destination, indicating that a journey does not necessarily have to have a definitive end. Rather, it can be seen as a continuous process. Besides the search for safety and the need to survive, one of the protagonists, The Boy, who appears to be no older than a preteen, is faced with the impending death of his father, who chronically spits blood. Because the boy has never experienced independence, he is essentially faced with a "second" journey in addition to the metaphysical journey experienced by both characters. For The Boy, it is the journey toward responsible manhood, being able to provide for himself and survive on his own, something he did not have to do due to the presence of his father. Both must realize their true position in this reformed society (or lack thereof). The father now understands that no matter how much he wants his son to survive, his goal is to keep him alive as long as possible, with the slim hope that he can survive and, presumably, procreate. However, the son's goal is to achieve independence, and the life and death experiences these characters face only serve to develop his independence. In this sense, The Road can also be considered a quasi-Bildungsroman, a genre involving a young protagonist who experiences psychological and moral growth throughout the story. The boy, fearful and flattering at first, slowly begins to exercise his independence, as evidenced by certain rebellious actions against his father. For example, when his father wishes to enter an abandoned house in search of resources, The Boy refuses to enter, considering it dangerous (McCarthy 13). We also know that the boy is silently aware of his father's illness (McCarthy 28), meaning that he has slowly learned to accept the fact that his father will not always be there to protect him and provide for his needs. At the end of the novel, when the boy's father dies, the boy fearlessly faces a stranger with his family and, presumably, follows them to safety. The road ideally embodies a quote from novelist Don Williams Jr., who said: "The road of life is full of twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same." Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination. Among the characters in The Road, the lessons of survival, epiphany, and growth arise only from the dangers encountered along the journey, never from the destination. The destination, in fact, is not mentioned, which further underlines the author's desire to perpetually develop his enlightenment. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is another work in which a physical travel motif is used. However, unlike the bleak and fruitless journey for carnal survival undertaken in The Road, Huck Finn tells the story of a runaway slave and a naive but independent young boy on their path to freedom. This freedom is different for each character: the slave, Jim, hopes to free himself from his slave status by escaping to the north, while the boy, Huck, hopes to free himself from the decorum of civilized society (Twain 32 ). In a sense, both characters lack freedom in their positions at the beginning of the novel, and they set out to gain it regardless of the difficulties. However, despite the absence of cannibals like in The Road, Huck and Jim's journey poses a number of problems for them, such as being taken hostage by two charlatans (Twain 122), having to lead a double life when they come across communities (Twain 145) and escape thereconquest (at least for Jim) when they discover that their journey to freedom has taken a bad turn. In this metaphorical journey, Huck's story embodies a Bildungsroman, and he is the more dynamic character of the duo. He grows from a naive young boy to a slightly more mature and erudite young boy, having seen the true colors of discrimination and having learned the nature of people through the various feuds and schemes that snake through the slave community. For example, before embarking on this journey, Huck maintains the traditional view that black people were to be submissive to white people and that they were nothing more than cattle in human flesh. However, halfway through their journey, Huck learns that Jim, although a slave, is a human like Huck himself, and he even accepts the sentence to hell for refusing to turn him over (Twain 205). This realization marks one of the most profound turning points in the novel. Despite the revelations that Huck himself experiences, his traveling partner, Jim, remains relatively static, clinging to his beliefs from the beginning of the story and perhaps only learning that not all white people are evil through the kindness of Huck. , does not require a real movement from one area to another, although it does not necessarily exclude it. However, the characters who embark on such a journey are far from idle, as they must contend with a fluid, active, and often powerful society that influences and attempts to shape them. It is this process of modeling which constitutes the difficulties encountered throughout a figurative journey. One of the archetypal figurative journeys is used in the novel set in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, To Kill a Mockingbird, in which the protagonists, Jean Louis Finch ("Scout") and Jeremy Finch, two young children , experience the true colors of society and are forced to face the miseries of maturity beyond their years. As the story begins, readers learn that their father, Atticus, is a prominent lawyer in town and that he chose to defend a black man, Jim, in their discriminatory society (Lee 18). For this reason, Jem and Scout are the objects of scorn from many of the town's characters. Jem is also struck by a dual lesson of death and courage through his forced community service with Mrs. Dubose, a cranky morphine addict (Lee 103). Of the two, Jem seems to be the most affected by the psychological journey that the two protagonists have experienced. embark. During the trial itself, although it is clear that Atticus has presented a powerful defense and discredited Jim's accusers on several occasions (Lee 205), Jim is still found guilty and is later shot while attempting to escape (Lee 212). Jem is broken during this ordeal, and his faith in the utopian society he had believed in during his naive years and in the legal system is compromised. He and Scout learn that the world is certainly not an ideal place and that stigma can play a large role in determining factors as important as life or death. Although it seems that Jem goes through the journey faster than Scout, by the end of the novel, Scout seems to have actually learned more than Jem. The father of the girl who had accused Jim of raping her is bitter at his defeat and near the end of the novel he attempts to kill Scout and Jem as they return home. However, they are saved by the rapid appearance of Boo Radley, a hermit, about whom Jem and his friends keep spreading horrible rumors, trying to lure him out of hiding. Scout, however, quickly learns that what Jem was doing was inconsiderate, and she even makes an extremely pointed guess about Boo's desire to stay hidden. During the tests of.