1a. What is your destination on this journey?
2a. What is the condition of the road on which you begin your journey?
3a. How do you assess your journey as a whole?
4a. Into what four stages can your journey be divided?
5a. Do you agree with the narrator that it is better to go through life without a map? What are some of the benefits of not planning your life out in advance?
1b. What is the significance of the fact that you can no longer see the city from the second road?
2b. Why does the highway become monotonous? Why do you decide to find another road?
3b. What have you gained by following your own path?
4b. In the beginning of the story, "you are a lover of maps." What does it mean when you are well into your journey and you see the map "as a blank sheet of paper"?
5b. Another selection that focuses on the idea of a personal quest is the excerpt from Walden on page 287. Review that selection. What map did Henry David Thoreau follow? Which roads did he take? Explain how "Journey" relates to the following Thoreau quote: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
Point of View. Which point of view is used in "Journey"? What impact does the use of this point of view have on the reader? How would the story's impact change if it were written from a different point of view?
Allegory. What is the significance of the changing roads you take on your journey? What have you established by the time you reach the footpath? Besides a journey, how else could Joyce have written allegorically about life?
1. Write a tour guide pointing out the key points of your journey.
2. Imagine that you write an advice column and a teenager has written you about what choices he or she should make. Write an advice column telling the teenager how to travel through life.
3. The narrator says, "You discover that for some time you have not been able to see the city you are headed for, though you know it is still somewhere ahead of you." Write a paragraph explaining the allegorical meaning of this sentence.
Rewrite the first paragraph of "Journey" using a third-person point of view and the past tense to see how these changes alter the meaning of the story.
