People who undertake journeys cannot remain unaltered
...ts the wise and pure.” The persona is therefore altered by the journey bestowed with wisdom and finding sanction in the pleasures life and nature can provide. Coleridge further highlights the significance of the imagination as a catalyst for growth and a change in perspective in his confessional piece “Frost at Midnight” The traveller journeys back and forth in time through their own mind’s creations. First admiring the naturalistic environment seen in the personified observation of the frost “The Frost performs its secret ministry/ Unhelped by any wind”, the persona transcends back to his childhood in reminiscence of when his imagination provided him relief from the morbid repetitiveness of the classroom. “How oft, at school… have I gazed upon the bars.” This recollection of his past imagining is a catalyst for his escape from present reality into the realm of the natural world. He then admires his sleeping baby son and is able to optimistically imagine a future where his offspring will be able to reap the spiritual benefits the natural world can offer. His personified pronouncement “therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee” shows how his reflective musing is able to assure the composer of a superior future for his son and is not resentful of his past because he becomes aware that through his experience he is able to provide his son with the joyous childhood he did not have. “Kubla Khan” explores the ability of the artist to recreate what the imagination is able to conceive. Through his opium induced trance, Coleridge envisions a metaphysical world that he attempts to recreate. As a result of his imaginary journey he becomes aware that there will there will always be tension existing between the artist and the art. Thus, Kubla Khan is a metaphor for the height of the supernatural beauty man would like to create but can never conceivably achieve. The poem elates with imagery of utopian perfection. However, Coleridge seems aware from the outset of his limitations through the line “caverns measureless to man”. The next stanza acts as juxtaposition to the perfection of “the stately pleasure dome” and focuses on man’s destructive nature. “The ceaseless turmoil seething” is Coleridge’s attempt to create imagery to emphasise the contrast between man’s nature and man’s aspirations in art. The use of the word “shadow” highlights the fact that mankind is constantly overshadowed by his artistic creations. Coleridge continues to create a paradoxical tone in the line a “sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice” em phasing the tension between art and the artist. The poem climaxes with the realisation that man can never “revive within” him the “symphony and song” of “paradise”. The imaginary journey leads to the composer’s philosophical awareness that although man can see perfection, beauty and god in nature, he can never himself create it. The film text Vanilla Sky recreates Cameron Crowe’s vision of the way imaginative journeys can give, ironically, a greater appreciation of reality. Vanilla Sky closely mirrors the process of an imaginative dream leading to a seminal moment of realisation for the traveller. Through his ‘Lucid Dream’ the protagonist David Aames finally learns to appreciate life and reality. David is a shallow and egotistical individual who has always lived a self-indulgent life and has not had to struggle to gain any of life’s pleasures. Insight to his character is shown in the scene where he wakes in the morning, looks in the mirror and plucks from his head a single grey hair and the warning of his best friend’s words “without the bitter baby, the sweet ain’t as sweet”, which David carelessly brushes aside. David’s face is disfigured in a car crash as a result of his womanising ways. David later learns that is has been living in an imaginary world for the past 150 years and ...