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)
Key concepts
- Liminality
- The stretch of being no longer where you started and not yet where you are going. Nothing is owed there and nothing can reach you, which is why the same hour can feel like freedom or like homelessness depending on who is standing in it.
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Every work — at a glance
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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.
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What to know
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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.
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Across subjects
Theme connection
"Are We There Yet?"
Practice — a sample
LITA poem using the open road to reflect the traveler's inner life is MOST like —
- A A clock
- B A ledger
- C A fence
- D A receipt
- E A mirror
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