"Journey to the Interior" by Margaret Atwood, is an ambiguous poem. It appears to compare and contrast two journeys, one into a jungle and the other into the inner landscape of the individual soul.

Similarities :

The poetess says that the journey into thye soul resembles a journey into a jungle. In a jungle, continuous ranges of mountain which look like one wall open when we get close. Soon an open grazing land is seen. Similarly one's soul is intially impenetrable, but soon it presents a huge space. Like the tree which grows in swamps and is spindly, the inner world is also sparse. Even as one cannot go up to the cliff without gripping the rough rock with one's hands, without effort, the inner world is inaccessible. In a jungle, movement is not easy, as the location is not clear, as in a map. The path is full of darkness or light alternating and there is no clear destination. In the inner world also one has a similar experience.

Differences :

The journey through the interior is also different from the journey through a jungle. In the former journey there are no charts.Distracting thoughts of a  shoe under the chair or mushrooms to be sliced in the kkitchen may hamper one's journey. A sentence may also put one out of one's mediation like a heavy log of wood. Distracting thoughts, domestic duties or worries or verbal wrongs may distract one in one's mediation. These may not hinder a journey, into a jungle.

Danger :

The journey to interior is more dangerous. Unlike in the jungle, there is no compact to direct us. The sun's directions are erractic. Since the journey is done alone, no communication is possible. Hence, words here are meaningless, as shouting in an empty wilderness. Very few people who have entered the inner landscape have returned safely. One easily loses one's way in the inner landscape. The only thing one can do is to keep one's head, to remain cool.

"Journey to the Interior" is a spiritual poem. In the inner landscape, one is alone with God whose ways are inscrutable. There is no way out and no way into it, as there is no destination. Thus, the spiritual path is the toughest, where very few succeed.