What the Road Does to Us

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door,” says Bilbo to his nephew in The Fellowship of the Ring, and he doesn’t even have stroads to worry about. Stepping over your threshold means signing a contract with the unknown, even if you have a destination in mind. In the works below, the road is not just a strip of dirt or asphalt: it is a psychological landscape. As you read them, consider: what is the difference between traveling by choice and by necessity? And is it ever better to just stay home?

Du Fu | “Travelling Again” (761 CE)
William Shakespeare | “Sonnet 50” (1609)
John Massefield | “Sea Fever” (1902)
Carl Sandburg | “Window” (1914)
Robert Frost | “The Road Not Taken” (1915)
William Butler Yeats | “Sailing to Byzantium” (1927)
Rustu Onur | “The Journey” (c. early 20th century)
Czeslaw Milosz | “This Only” (1988)
Richard Russo | “Just Drive” (1992)
Rita Dove | “Vacation” (1994)

Every work — at a glance

Travelling Again — Du Fu (poem)

A weary traveller recrosses a bridge he has crossed before, and the hills and willows seem to know him — the landscape remembering the man rather than the reverse.

+ 9 more works explained inside

What to know

01
Direction matters more than distance, because the road mostly mirrors what the traveller brought to it. Du Fu recrosses a bridge toward the familiar and his sorrow drains away; the rider in “Sonnet 50” travels away from the person he loves, and every identical mile is grief.

+ 1 more insight inside

Across subjects

Du Fu's exhaustion is not a traveller's. The An Lushan rebellion tore Tang China apart from 755, emptied the capital and uprooted millions, and he spent his

Theme connection

"Are We There Yet?"

'There' is a state of mind the road only reveals: Milosz arrives when he stops demanding anything. So is it ever better to stay home? Every speaker here carried their sorrow along and found it waiting — but Yeats left because home itself had become unbearable.

Practice — a sample

LITDove savours the hour before takeoff; Nasseri spent eighteen years in one hall. The key difference is —

A Who chose it
B Who built it
C Who paid for it
D Who cleaned it
E Who guarded it

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