# Changed Times explained — Travel Essays

> Chapter companion for Travel Essays by Robert Louis Stevenson.

## What happens

The narrator reflects on how the character of the journey changes as the Oise widens and they enter more civilized, populated areas. The sense of romance and intimacy with strangers fades, replaced by a dull, golden stupor. The chapter explores the ecstatic, mindless state of paddling, where the self dissolves and the body acts on its own, leading to a profound, almost Buddhist detachment.

## Themes in this chapter

### Travel and Discovery

The chapter contrasts the romantic, intimate encounters of early travel with the dull, commonplace experience of the wider river, highlighting how travel loses its novelty in civilized settings.

### Human Connection and Community

The narrator notes the loss of spontaneous intimacy with strangers as they enter towns, where people pass without salutation, contrasting with the earlier, more personal interactions along the rural river.

### Freedom vs. Confinement

The narrator describes a paradoxical freedom found in the mindless, ecstatic stupor of paddling, where the self is liberated from conscious thought, yet also confined within a detached, isolated state of being.

## Character check-ins

### The Cigarette

The Cigarette is the narrator's companion on the canoe trip; they share gastronomical fancies and the experience of the river's changing character.

## Key lines

> As long as the Oise was a small rural river, it took us near by people's doors, and we could hold a conversation with natives in the riparian fields. But now that it had grown so wide, the life along shore passed us by at a distance.

When the Oise was narrow and rural, we paddled close to homes and could chat with locals in the fields. Now that the river is wide, the people on the banks seem remote and unreachable.

_The narrator contrasts the intimate early journey with the detached later experience as the river widens._

> I have stupefied myself in this way more than once; indeed, I dearly love the feeling; but I never had it to the same degree as when paddling down the Oise. It was the apotheosis of stupidity.

I've often lulled myself into a daze, and I truly enjoy it, but never as intensely as while canoeing down the Oise. It was the ultimate state of mindless bliss.

_The narrator celebrates the profound, blissful stupor induced by the repetitive motion of paddling._

> I looked on upon somebody else, who managed the paddling; I was aware of somebody else's feet against the stretcher; my own body seemed to have no more intimate relation to me than the canoe, or the river, or the river banks.

I observed as if another person was doing the paddling; I felt someone else's feet on the footrest; my own body felt as disconnected from me as the canoe, the river, or the banks.

_The narrator describes a dissociative state where the self becomes detached from the body and actions._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/travel_essays_se/chapters/changed-times
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/travel_essays_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/travel_essays_se/chapters