Area of Study - Journeys

Year 11 Advanced English – Area of Study Assessment Task
Section A
By Emily Beck

“Texts evoke a variety of perspectives”

When our class concept of journeys was revealed to us as the idea that we would be studying in class, I already had my own assumptions about journeys. To me a journey was the idea of travelling from one place to another, this is a somewhat superficial understanding that I had of the concept that had been formed by the context I had heard the word ‘journey’ being used in. However through further analysis of this term both in class and in my own time, my original ideas and assumptions about journeys have been challenged and significantly changed. Through collaborative group work, teacher led discussions and composing of imaginative stories on the concept I have now come to the conclusion that journeys can be in numerous other forms rather than just a physical journey, and these journeys are what make our lives and shape the people we have and will become, they don’t have a beginning or and end instead they lead to more journeys.

By the analysis of my prescribed text “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, a poem in which explores the complexities of decision making in life within an easily interpreted tale of a protagonist character who endures the task of making a simple decision of which way to go when he comes to a fork in the road; along with my own related text the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz” originally written by L. Frank Baum Victor, and later reinterpreted by director Victor Flemming. This film portrays the journey undertaken by a young girl as she is transported into a magical world, which parallels her own existence, where she finds her true identity and where she belongs. Both of these texts demonstrate the same universal theme that it is the decisions and journeys that we carry out that in return grant us the consequences that make us who we are. Through language forms and features included in the both the film, genre,...