Student Essay on Imaginative Journeys in Literature

Different types of imaginative journeys are explored in these works of literature: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poems "Lime Tree Bower My Prison" and "Frost at Midnight," Victor Kelleher's "The Ivory Trail," Maurice Sendak's picture book, "Where the Wild Things Are," and Katherine Patterson's "Bridge to Terabithia."

Any journey requires an individual to move involuntarily or voluntarily from where one is to a new "destination." The destination could take various forms; a place, an emotional or mental state. The value of undertaking a journey however often lies in the process of the journey rather than the destination itself. Undertaking imaginative journeys give us the ability to: fulfil desires, ambitions and wishes that cannot be realistically fulfilled; explore emotional, spiritual and intellectual possibilities; escape from an undesirable reality; and they allow us to reflect and speculate on the past and future. Our imagination wields the power to carry us to different worlds in the shortest space of time and allow us to develop our inner being, without it we could not develop emotionally, mentally nor spiritually. These concepts about imaginative journeys have been illustrated.....