Truthful Travel

The essence of travel is to embark on a journey to the unknown. Of course, few people leave home without telling friends and family about their trip, so there is an expectation that the traveler will report back about his wondrous discoveries. This can lead travelers to exaggerate or lie about their trip in order to save their pride. In “Of Cannibals,” Michel de Montaigne says the only source that can be trusted on matters of unknown lands is an extremely truthful man or one who is too simple to even think of lying. But sometimes travelers lie about their journey to even themselves, in order to preserve their original idealistic vision of the trip.

In his essay “The Tempest and the New World,” Charles Frey balances the history and romanticism of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. He argues that the play was most likely based upon common knowledge of the new American world, but that Shakespeare took liberties with the facts to shape his story into a more captivating tale. Frey also writes about the optimism the new world colonists had at the start of their journey, and how that positive outlook turned to misery when faced with reality – but later, the same travelers claimed to have found everything they were searching for.

This led me to question how honest travelers are with themselves about their trips. Instead of admitting defeat, many of the travelers we have read about in this course have altered their accounts of reality in order to convince others of their success, and perhaps to convince themselves. They might change their objectives to match what they actually achieved, or find hidden benefits in the disappointing situations they find themselves in. There’s rarely a way to tell for sure if a returning traveler is truthful about his sojourn. Even if he tries to be honest, he may have smeared the line in his mind between fact and romanticism, perhaps subconsciously, to protect his travels from being deemed worthless. I think the best way to accurately remember one’s travels is to go with limited expectations and an open mind; and if a trip is entirely unpleasant, it can at least be a contrast by which life at home seems that much better.