Within the context of his community, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's life is defined. His goals and responsibilities are clearly outlined for him, and he succeeds in those roles. And one might say he achieves a great deal of accomplishment and joy in his life because of that, but then, he leaves his community to go on a journey, and suddenly, he is as perplexed by the human experience as he always was. The value of his Journey is not that he explores Italy—it is that he explores himself.
For Goethe, it seems that travel has an ironic purpose. On the surface, it looks like a journey is designed to show more external reality to a person, but a person's response to their external reality is also illuminating, so that instead of just taking in new vantages and vistas, he actually evolves his point of view. He is a smart guy, too, so he goes in understanding this process. The value of these diaries is that he reflects in a thoughtful, aware manner on something unfathomable and strange—his own self.
Strangely, he finds himself fascinated by the question of death. Why should death come up at all during what essentially amounts to vacation? It is because his role in his community, his time sacrificed for jobs and responsibilities, is essentially driven by his desire to spend his time well. When he undertakes his journey, he puts all those mechanisms to the side and focuses on the quality of his life, on his waking consciousness, and in light of those reflections, his desire to live is clearly evident. The desire to live is the desire to never die, he feels, and he even quotes and old Latin death motif.
