In Brooklyn, Toíbín Demonstrates the Significance of Both Literal and Metaphoric Journeys.

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In Brooklyn, Toíbín demonstrates the significance of both literal and metaphoric journeys. In Brooklyn, Toíbín demonstrates both the literal and metaphoric journeys that a migrant experiences when they learn to leave behind the old and the familiar, and adapt to a new environment. Eilis’ boat journey to Brooklyn has a significant meaning behind it; it shows the emotions that she is experiencing or going to experience. It is not going to be easily accomplished as she has hoped: ‘if only the rest of it could be as easy as this’. This boat trip also symbolises the emotions she’s going experience during the transaction process of migration. Eilis’ is hopeful and optimistic about the decision to migrate to Brooklyn for better opportunity. Those ‘who went to America could become rich’ and ‘no one who went to America missed home’. When Eilis met up with her brother, Jack, before she boarded the ship, ‘all she could think of were more questions’. She seeks advice from Jack who is more experienced about migration because she is excited about exploring a foreign land. ‘She hoped that she would be ready for whatever was going to happen to her.’ The second phrase of her journey is homesickness and loneliness. Jack opens up to Eilis that ‘in the first few months, I couldn’t find my way around at all and I was desperate to go home. I would have done anything to go home’. Feeling lonely and helpless is something that migrants experience and it is the hardest part of migration. Eilis feels ‘terrible’ during her boat trip due to seasickness. It was so bad that it ‘was something that her mother had never even imagined’; she hopes ‘it was a dream’. The seasickness from the boat journey symbolises homesickness from migration. A migrant eventually adjusts to their new world and settles in. During the boat journey, after the rough seas had passed with the help of Georgina,

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