Travel

The speaker narrates “Travel” from a first-person perspective and explores their relationship with place, as well as their inability to explore beyond one’s locality. The speaker’s identity is ambiguous—they have no name, no age, no gender, and no defined location. Based on the speaker’s inaccessibility to the train, as well as their focus on connections to community and friendship, one can infer the speaker is not male, especially with the restrictions on and expectations placed on women in the early-20th century. The speaker may be of no gender at all. The speaker does not appear to be a historical figure and is speaking from their present moment, which is held in the abstract. The choice of speaker ambiguity may be intentional on Millay’s part. It creates limitations and distance for the speaker without explicitly attaching to gender. The obscured or opaque identity also coincides with the existential questions many in the Lost Generation had about their home locale, purpose, and value system.

There is much ambiguity with the setting. Concrete details are sparse, with the exception of the train and the exhaust it emits.