Imagery and tone in literary analysis

Imagery & Tone in "Who Makes the Journey"

Imagery and tone are very prominent elements in the poem "Who Makes the Journey" by Cathy Song. The persistent metaphor or analogy that Song uses is with respect to the movement of history and the movement of an elderly woman. The majority of the imagery used in the poem is with respect to how the woman, who moves like the passage of history, is dressed, looks, and how she moves as an individual. The comparison between history and an old woman is not a comparison many people would make readily or easily, but Song does a strong job of keeping the readers attention over the course of the poem. The imagery and tone assist the reader in individual understanding of the poem "Who Makes the Journey" overall. Most of the language Song uses in the poem is imagery of the old woman. Therefore, a reader must be at least somewhat in tune and aware of the imagery to get any kind of understanding of the poem at all. The ways in which the imagery is composed contributes to the sense of tone of the piece. Therefore, to understand and ponder the imagery is also to understand and ponder the tone. While all writers choose their words with specificity and intention, this may be the most true for writers that are poets. Thus readers can infer that Song's choice of words, style, and composition are very intentional in the descriptions she includes as well as some descriptions she leaves out.

The old woman of the poem is in a hurry. In the first stanza, Song describes this woman as having left the house while the old man, her implied companion, chose to be more sensible and stay home to die. The old woman is moving quickly and with intention. This description may be contrary to common ideas of elderly women. In many cultures, people presume that the elderly move much more slowly than adults, adolescents, and children, but the woman who is the central character of "Who Makes the Journey." Even the title implies extended movement as well as curiosity into the person who is engaged in the extended movement, which is some kind of journey. The word journey implies some kind of purpose; the use of the word journey also implies some kind of change, obstacle, or struggle. A trip would be a leisure activity, but a journey usually means that there will be some kind of challenge to overcome. This specific choice of words helps the reader gauge what the tone of the poem is overall as well as in specific stanzas or lines.

The woman of the poem has travelled all over the world and is a person that we might see in the backgrounds of our own journeys, as suggested in stanza two and stanza five. Not only is the woman hurrying, but she also has baggage of sorts. She carries "the weight of the ghost child she carried for centuries" (stanza three) and a "sack of cabbages." (stanza five) There is something striking about the image of an elderly woman in a hurry, carrying the weight of a ghost with her for centuries, as she were pregnant with a ghost fetus in addition to carrying a sack of heavy vegetables. This imagery again goes against typical images of elderly women who barely have the strength to walk without assistance let alone carry a kind of sac within her body and on her back. Yet, despite the conflict of imagery between what may be normal and the imagery of the poem, the image of the woman is quite clear in the mind of the reader, though it may confuse him/her.