Previous
Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Journey, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Modernization and Colonial Violence
Land and Culture
Heroism and Societal Inequality
The Individual vs. the Collective
Aging
Summary
Analysis
The narrator prepares for his trip into the city to meet officials about his land. He thinks of himself as “an old man going on a journey," though he notes that he is only 71, not really an old man. His family buttons up his coat for him and gives him money, making him feel more like an old man than he wants. While he thinks a “pakeha” (the Māori word for “white person”) may have died in this coat because it was second hand, he likes it and isn’t afraid of “pakeha kehuas” (a white person’s ghost), anyway. He goes to the bathroom to avoid having to use the unpleasant lavatories in the city, and then the taxi arrives.
The story emphasizes the narrator’s age and race, letting the reader know that these will be important features of his character. The narrator’s family treats him as though he is less able than he is, but the narrator resists this categorization. In doing so, he stresses the importance of the individual over the collective and demonstrates that he has self-confidence despite his family’s negative implications about his age. By using the word “pakeha,” the narrator introduces the concept of racial tension between Māori and white culture, a key part of New Zealand’s colonial experience. Finally, by identifying the narrator only as an “old man going on a journey,” instead of introducing him with a name, the story casts the narrator in the role of a hero, leaving home on an adventure.
Active
Themes
In the taxi, he is in a good mood, happy to be off on his own. The driver observes that he is leaving early in the day, and the narrator responds that he is going out on a business trip that he is confident will go well. He enjoys the familiar smells of the taxi and the sight of the “same old shops,” which he notes are doing much better than in the past. After chatting about the narrator’s family, they arrive at the train station. The narrator pays the driver and tells him to pick him up at the train station at ten after five in the evening.
Again, the narrator appears self-confident and sees himself as a capable leader of his family. He also continues to value his independence from his family, indicating his prioritization of the individual over the collective. Finally, in noticing that the “same old shops” are doing much better than in the past, he demonstrates a tension between old and new and past and present. This tension is related both to his experience of aging and to the rapid modernization that is occurring in the area.
Active
Themes
As he enters the station, he notices that it smells like pee and doesn’t feel safe, a sharp contrast to the open-air station filled with impressive steam engines he remembers from his youth. He is annoyed at the shortness of his breath as he climbs the stairs to the platform, and he takes offence at the man in the ticket office, who looks unkempt and scatters the narrator’s change instead of handing it neatly back to him. He wants to flip the ticket officer off, which would make him feel less like an old man, but does not.
Sitting down in the front car of the train, he enjoys the warmth of the heaters and is glad to be free from his family, who fuss over him because of his age. As the train moves, he observes the landscape out the window. Not many fishing boats have gone out on the ocean because of the bad weather, which he attributes to Tamatea, an especially windy time period in the Māori calendar. He notes unhappily that young people don’t believe in this traditional Māori concept, and instead just watch the weather on the television.
Get the entire Journey LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
Next, the train passes over a strip of land that used to be sea, where the narrator remembers harvesting pipis. He can’t harvest here anymore because the pakeha filled this area of the ocean with land and rerouted the train over it, in order to build a bigger road for cars. He doesn’t trust this fake land and imagines the train might hop the track into the sea. But the thought of dying doesn’t faze him because he’s “nearly old anyway.” He reflects on the strangeness of people making the sea into land, and observes that they treat the land as if it was meaningless and dead.
Active
Themes
The train pulls into the next station, in an area where he has many relatives. He is glad he isn’t visiting these relatives because he thinks they, too, would try to meddle in the business about his land. He also observes that this area is full of new development: there are new houses, buildings, and roads; the pakeha have filled another piece of harbor to make more land to build on. The “lunatic asylum” is still there, but these days, he reminds himself, they call it a “psychiatric hospital.” As the train moves on, there are more houses, and the narrator remembers the farms that used to be there, wondering if the farmers are dead now—maybe they died rich after selling their land to developers.
Active
Themes
The train begins to pass through tunnels, throwing its passengers into the dark. In between each tunnel, construction machines are building roads through the hills. The narrator bitterly laments this pakeha tendency to destroy the natural world, as well as Māori complicity in these construction projects, as companies often employ Māori people to drive the machines. He compares the exposed ground of the construction projects to open wounds that will “bleed” all over the valley when it rains. He also expects that the projects are unearthing bones. At the same time, he reminds himself that these development projects allow people to have housing, food, and transportation, and that people need these things.
After exiting the second tunnel, the passengers have a view of the city and its harbor. The narrator observes it with combined awe and weariness: he admires it, but just looking at it makes him tired. The children sitting next to him also stop moving at the sight, “their eyes full to exploding.” The quieter of the two children reminds the narrator of a younger family member named George. When George was a child, he would run away to the narrator’s house. He would often stay there for a week or more, not speaking or asking for anything, until his mother came to get him. The narrator decides he will try to find George in the city.
Active
Themes
The train pulls into the city’s railway station, which the narrator observes is much the same as he remembers. His memories of the station are violent ones: he remembers the particular spot where a man was found murdered; he remembers how, during his youth, many starving people crowded into the station to die together, rather than starve to death alone. He didn’t starve, though, because his father cultivated every part of the family’s land, growing all sorts of magnificent vegetables that the family could eat, sell, or give away. Often, the narrator and his siblings helped with the garden instead of going to school.
Back in the present, outside the station, the narrator is early for his meeting, so he decides to walk rather than take the bus, which he doesn’t trust. He knows the city well, having spent time in all the different pubs, and thinks that after his meeting has ended, he might go grab a drink to celebrate. He passes a spot where a road construction project bulldozed a graveyard, and remembers how the newspapers reported that the remains were “Resited […] tastefully.” He imagines the bones of different people all jumbled up together, and is glad none of his relatives were buried there. He continues on his walk, feeling confident about his upcoming meeting.
The narrator’s meeting is over; he is back in the railway station. It’s too early to catch the train home, so he waits, remembering how the starving people used to wait for death in the station when he was growing up. He looks for George, who is often in the station. The narrator’s right foot hurts, and he feels sick. The station is so crowded it feels like the “starvation times.”
Active
Themes
He thinks back to the meeting he just had at the city planning office. The city planner he was talking to kept calling him “Sir” in a way “that didn’t sound so well” to the narrator. The narrator started out the meeting identifying common ground between himself and the city, agreeing that “people need houses.” The narrator understood that the city planned to appropriate his land as part of a new housing development; meanwhile, the narrator explained, he and his now dead siblings had been planning for many years to subdivide the land so that each of his nieces and nephews could build their houses on it. Both sides wanted houses on the land.
Active
Themes
The city planner responded condescendingly, telling the narrator that it was not so simple. The two began to argue back and forth, with the narrator outlining his plan for subdivision, and the city planner telling him that subdivision was not possible. The city planner was not sure that the narrator understood just how complex and bureaucratic the subdivision process would be, and furthermore, the narrator’s land had already been set aside for something else. The narrator assured him he did understand, and that he had the money to pay for the process. But the city planner only offered to compensate his family members with money or “equivalent land.” This offer made no sense to the narrator, as the land had been his family’s home for generations—no land could possibly be equal. The family had communicated this many times to the city.
After this back and forth, the city planner offered to show the narrator the development plans (although, he pointed out, the narrator would be dead by the time the development was constructed). These plans, crafted by “experts,” designated the narrator’s land as a parking lot, according to its “suitability and convenience.” The narrator was astonished: why would they pave over the most fertile land in the area, and build houses on the rockiest sections? The narrator again refused to be “Resited” on different land, urging the city planner to revise the plans, since they were just drawings on paper, and pointing out that the family owned the land, not the city.
Active
Themes
The city planner argued that if the family—whom he calls “you people”—lived all in the same area as the narrator wanted, the land’s value would immediately decrease. At this comment, the narrator became very upset, and contemplated punching the city planner, but instead responded that the family didn’t want to be “scattered everywhere.” The two began talking at the same time, interrupting each other, with the planner continuing to make comments about the narrator’s family bringing down the land’s value, and the narrator continuing to state his family’s desire to stay on the land together and grow food there. Finally, instead of punching the city planner, the narrator kicks the side of his desk, breaking a hole in it and cracking the veneer.
Active
Themes
At this, the entire office became quiet. People in the office called the narrator a crazy old man and suggested that he be arrested or hospitalized for insanity, threatening to call their boss to deal with him. The city planner told the narrator to leave, and the narrator did, making sure not to limp.
Active
Themes
Back in the present, at the railroad station, George is sitting next to the narrator. They wait together, not talking much. The narrator does not tell him about the meeting, thinking that it’s no use telling George that “you go empty handed and leave nothing behind,” because George “had always been empty-handed, had never wanted anything except to have nothing.” Finally, the narrator leaves on his train, still trying not to limp.
Active
Themes
The narrator is in the taxi after his train ride back to his hometown station, making small talk with the driver. The driver drops him off in front of his door and compliments the narrator’s well-kept garden. The narrator promises to give the driver some vegetables the next time he sees him. The driver notices the narrator’s limp and asks him if he’s alright, and the narrator replies that he’s doing great.
Active
Themes
Inside his house, the narrator faces the expectant gazes of his family members, who are all wondering about the meeting. Sensing that the meeting went poorly, the family asks about other parts of the trip. The narrator tells them that George is okay. A family member mentions that she heard that George is in a gang, and doesn’t wash or go to work, but the narrator replies that George hasn’t changed at all. The family goes quiet, waiting for the narrator to talk about the meeting, and finally realizes that he won’t.
Active
Themes
Later in the evening, the narrator abruptly tells his family that he does not want to be buried when he dies because the ground is not safe. They should cremate him instead. He yells this at his family, who look hurt. Meanwhile, his foot is becoming very painful. He goes to his room, shuts the door, and sits on his bed for a long time, staring at his hands.
