
Negativity never gets anyone anywhere. That’s exactly what Mary Oliver thought. She was surrounded by reluctance and she got passed the uncertainty and became the person she is now. Mary Oliver had to work hard to get passed the uncertainty from others and even from herself. In her poem “The Journey”, the main character ignores the negativity and she became closer to reaching her goal. 

In the poem “The Journey”, Mary Oliver uses the theme negativity a lot. The first time she uses this theme is when she said, “Though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice”(Oliver 92). This is showing that the people around the main character has no faith in her and show no support. They just criticize what she is doing and that negativity gets to her. She even starts to doubt herself and asks her if she can even reach her dreams or not. For example, Mary Oliver said, “Though their melancholy was terrible”(Oliver 92). This shows that the people around the main character criticism got to her and mad her real upset. Getting no support from love ones hurts and it makes you start to doubt yourself. Negativity is never a good thing it just makes the people around you worse and the same thing happened here in this poem. Mary Oliver is trying to prove a point that negativity will get to you and it will hurt. But the only thing that matters is how you take the negativity and what you do after that. If you just sulk and do nothing you will go nowhere in the world. But if you take it and make it your fuel to make the doubters wrong you will go far in your life and accomplish anything you dreamed of completing. 

So the main character gets on with her journey and she is so tired of the negativity that she says, “Mend my life” (Oliver 92). This is showing that is done with her friends that keep on giving her criticism and she is on a new journey in fixing her life. The first step is proving everyone wrong and reaching her goal. So she continues her goal. People in the world do what she does everyday. For example, Mary Oliver had to go through those negative comments. People around her doubted if she could make it as a writer. Instead of getting sad after getting negative comments about her ideas, she fixed her life and took that as her fuel. She ignored them and became a successful writer today and this poem “The Journey” is about her life and how she got passed one of her biggest obstacles. Also she said in an interview, “I consider myself kind of a reporter- one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write”(Oliver 92). This shows that Mary Oliver is unique in her writing and even amuses herself. And whatever doubts she had for herself and the doubts of others for her are gone now. Now she is an award winning writer and a very successful writer. 

The last quote Mary Oliver uses in this poem is the most important one. The narrator says, “As you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own”(Oliver 92). This is saying that she totally ignored the people around her who doubted her and proved them wrong. When she says she began to see the stars burn through the sheets that means she is so close to reaching her goal and that she’s getting so happy it’s like fireworks going of in her head of excitement. The main character reached her goal and the feeling of reaching it probably had the same emotion of joy as when Mary Oliver won the Pulitzer Prize. This story is about Mary Oliver and how she had to work hard and without the support of many.  But she worked through it and finally reached her goal with winning the Pulitzer Prize. It is a great honor to win this prize and not many writers have done it. Writers spent their whole lives trying to get this prize. But Mary Oliver did get this prize and know she can stop doubting herself as a bad writer and be happy for accomplishing her goals. She still has struggles now and especially when her partner died. But Mary Oliver is working through it and still writing to this day.

In Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey”, the main character ignores the negativity and she became closer to reaching her goal. We learned that Mary Oliver was talking about herself and the struggles she had to go through. Negativity is never a bright sight and no one should ever hear these comments. But if you do, it’s all about how you take it and get over it. The most successful people in the world get over these comments everyday in their life, and that’s exactly what Mary Oliver did in her life. Negativity is something you have to deal with in your life, and what we learned in this poem if you can just past those thoughts you will be better in the long run and accomplish your goals. 


