D. C Scott’s poem, En Route describes the moment of stillness a train passenger observes as his train is unexpected halted on a train journey. This essay analyses the poem, exploring details of how the journey the passenger intended to take is interrupted, offering him an altogether unexpected journey, one which affords him an opportunity to see his surroundings in a new light. Within this essay I will explore the meaning of the title “en route” and consider the various meanings that can be attributed to this title as a result of the track followed by the passenger within the poem.
The poem starts with an attention grabbing line, “The train has stopped for no apparent reason in the wilds”. The image presented is that of isolation, a passenger stuck in the middle of nowhere, with a sense of solitude and forbiddance. All around the now still train is further stillness. Winter has frozen the landscape in the same way in which the train has been stopped, “A frozen lake is level and fretted over”, “all so still”.
The reader is provided with an image of stillness and serenity, the purpose of the train journey, its origin and its destination all become irrelevant and the reader instead becomes heavily involved in the here and now and what is happening in the landscape outside in which the train now sits is so still. The stoppage of the train allows the passenger to look beyond his immediate surroundings within the train to what is actually happening outside his carriage.
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When you attempt to find a solution to any kind of problem, it is best to look at it from different perspectives. When two poems focus on a common theme with the same familial relationships, different points of view must certainly give great insight on the topic at hand. For instance, in “Persimmons” and “Pause”, the reader can clearly understand the vast love in the child- ...
The delicate and detailed language employed within the poem describes the world outside, “it seems a tiny landscape in the moonlight”. The landscape that, moments ago would have been a blurred image as the train rushed through, becomes a fascinating scene with multiple levels of life, detail and delicacy. Descriptive lines such as “wisps of shadows from the naked birches” and “one almost hears it twinkle as it thaws” provide the reader with a vivid sense of how the passenger is able to scrutinize every minute part of the landscape which surrounds him.
These are all things that people generally do not have the time or opportunity to observe as they journey on route from one place to another. Whilst these images are perhaps real and part of nature and life, the passenger seems to perceive them as transitory, “they’re going fast where all impressions go”. He is preoccupied with his journey, a journey that he values in contrast to the scene he can see. The train represents real direction to him, a solid steel structure which is without emotion and sensuality is, ironically, of more meaning to him that these delicate images.
The purity and honesty of the nature that he is afforded the opportunity to view in great detail is something that he sorrowfully perceives as meaningless, “On a frail substance- images like these, vagaries the unconscious mind receives”. The passenger is unable to change. He intends to carry on with the journey he started and, sadly, dismisses the intimate relationship between himself and the environment in which he lives. The title of the poem En Route has numerous meanings within this poem.
The train is clearly en route from one place to another when it is stopped. The stoppage itself is ironic as the train is no longer “en route”; it is going nowhere at all. However, through the stoppage the passenger is transported from one place to another almost instantaneously. Whereas previously he would have been concerned with the immediate surroundings of his carriage, with the landscape perhaps whirling by quickly outside his window, he is now offered an opportunity to look beyond this, to real life outside his window.
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These views offer him another route, a possibility to acquaint himself with the real meaning of life. Although he momentarily observes this and appears to emphasize with it in some way, he eventually rejects it as being something that isn’t of real meaning. He instead chooses to continue on his intended route, leaving the reader with the sense that he is on the wrong tracks, failing to be fully appreciative of the images he can see.
