Individual outcomes are inevitable precipitations of journeys. In Lord Alfred Tennyson’s ‘Crossing the Bar’, the speaker optimistically accentuates an enlightening inner journey about death, alluding to biological maturation. Tennyson manipulates various poetic techniques, including metaphors, imagery and symbolism, producing an elegy appreciating natural human processes. In William Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’, literary techniques convey the tragic protagonist’s journey; Macbeth’s deleterious disposition replaces his valiant nature. Manifest in ‘Macbeth’, the Three Witches’ prophecy precipitates Macbeth’s ambition, catalysing his detrimental inner journey.
When ambitious Macbeth commits regicide, his inner journey and apprehensive and guilty dispositions are apparent. The metaphor in “sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep!”, where “sleep” symbolises Duncan, demonstrates Macbeth will not surmount his guilt, precipitated from murdering King Duncan, through
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The exclamation with “and after that the dark!” amplifies his excitement and acceptance of death, symbolised by the anonymity of darkness, and its entailments. The biblical allusion and metaphor in “I hope to see my Pilot face to face”, conveys the “Pilot” of the speaker’s boat, metaphorical for God, is leading him towards the ocean, towards his inevitable death with cumulative hope of meeting God. His anticipation reinforces his death is not lugubrious, but is a pleasant endeavour towards an unknown existence beyond death. Through the extended metaphor of crossing the sand bar, illustrative of humans passing from life to death, exclamation and metaphors, Tennyson expresses an inner journey, disguised as a physical voyage, eliciting the speaker’s dispositions to transform from fearing death to becoming confident and appreciative of a human’s ‘final’