Point of View

"Questions of Travel" is told from the first-person plural point of view, meaning that the speaker uses "we/us" as pronouns and "our" as the possessive determiner. Though speakers should not automatically be conflated with poets, many details support the fact that the speaker in this poem could be read as Bishop herself. When the speaker says, "Think of the long trip home. / Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?" she is likely addressing fellow travelers (13-14). The speaker constantly questions the ethics of travel by considering the implication of setting from home in the first place. The constant use of questions demonstrates that the speaker is more interested in the ongoing process of inquiry than on arriving on a hasty or easy answer.

Later in the poem, the speaker refers to either herself or another character in the third person using...