
Mary Oliver uses her poem, “The Journey”, as a broad representation of life and some of the experiences one might encounter. Oliver talks directly towards the reader whenever she uses the word “you”. As the word “you” is presented more and more, the reader unknowingly begins to relate it to their own life. In, “The Journey”, Mary Oliver writes about determination and going through struggles and hardships that shape one into the person they most desire to be. The “journey” described in “The Journey”, begins by interpreting what one is feeling during the first stages of young adult life. The organization of the poem starts with this realization of beginning a life, then later in life one begins to think about their progress so far and how they can continue what they are doing, or improve. After that then one realizes exactly what needs to be done and they go for it and try to complete their life strong. Oliver uses many different literary devices and broad statements that can only be uncovered when deep in the roots of this poem.

Oliver uses many different literary devices to help with her overall message. “The voices around you kept shouting their bad advice”, this statement made by Mary Oliver uses a metaphor for the things in life that pull one down and keep them from achieving their goals (Oliver lines 3-5). The “voices” mentioned can be interpreted as one’s inner voice or peers that maybe holding them down because it poses as a risk. Oliver is trying to convey the thought that even though some things may hold one back, one needs to push through these negative thoughts and achieve all that one person can with what they have. Moving past this in the poem, one might now be at the point in life at which adulthood has taken over. With adulthood, new struggles present themselves through the form of stress and responsibility.

When Oliver writes, “Mend my life!”, she is using this quote in the poem to represent what thoughts someone has when they are thinking about what they have achieved so far and if it was the best that one could have done with what they were given (Oliver line 10). The whole poem, “The Journey”, is about the journey of life, and Mary Oliver uses many literary devices to convey her many thoughts and everyone who reads this will interpret it in a way that most relates to them. “Mend my life!” is a phrase Oliver uses to present the idea of struggle through one shouting this out (Oliver Line 10). Immediately after Mary Oliver writes that phrase she follows it with, “each voice cried”, this is because Oliver wants to show that through these times of hardship there are many different influential voices coming from both inside and outside (Oliver line 11). 

The next portion directly after this Oliver writes, “But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do,” (Oliver lines 12-13). She is provoking the thought that even in tough times and struggles one needs to push through and keep moving forward through life, not letting anything get in the way of achieving a desired goal. “though the wind pried with its stiff fingers”, in this example, Oliver personifies the wind by giving it fingers, and this is powerful because it’s “stiff” fingers represent the amount of pain one goes through when dealing with daily struggles (Oliver lines 14-15). When she says “stiff fingers”, she is exaggerating the stress of this hardship, making it clear that this obstacle is different from any other one has experienced thus far. Many people wonder how some people can be knocked down in life so tragically and still have the motivation to get back up again. Many people also know and have experienced the feeling of being knocked down and not knowing whether they have the power to get back up again, but there is always someone or something to hold on to during those tough times and that is what Oliver is trying to get the reader to look for. 

“But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn”, Oliver uses these lines to signify the strength it takes to get back up after being knocked down (Oliver lines 23-25). In these times in adulthood one can even have feelings of nostalgia from their childhood or teenage years and some wish they could go back, but others feel they lived their lives to the fullest in the time that they have had and accept the fact that they cannot go back. This is the feeling that everyone strives to obtain at the ending years of one’s life. If one has feelings of regret because of the things they have done in their life, they need to learn to move past that and accept that the decisions they made got them to where they are today.

“There was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own”, this statement in “The Journey” represents one finding out that their whole life was determined by the decisions that they made, whether they knew they were making them (Oliver lines 27-29). The voice being described in these lines is recognized because all along the thing holding one back is revealed as one’s own voice and not someone else’s. One other sequence of lines in The Journey are the last four when Oliver writes, “determined to do the only thing you could do- determined to save the only life you could save” (Oliver lines 33-36). In this Oliver is attempting to convey the thought of every single person alive controlling their own destiny and everything that any person may do or any decision they make is under their control, no one else’s. 

As a final thought, Mary Oliver in her poem, “The Journey”, writes the whole poem using different literary devices such as metaphors, imagery, and personification. The thought-provoking ideas she introduces in this poem convey the reader to think about life and the journey everybody experiences through adulthood, including struggles, stressful times, and the idea of getting back up after one has been knocked down in life. This poem forces the reader to think about their own life and to motivate the reader to keep moving on through hard times and continue to work and muscle through everything one encounters. At the very end of the poem, Oliver writes, “determined to save the only life you could save”, she ends the poem with this statement to bury the thought of self-control over one’s life into the reader’s mind (Oliver lines 35-36). 
