In her piece, “The Journey”, Mary Oliver uses tone and repetition emotionally appeal to her readers to understand the importance of doing what is best for oneself to grow as a person and obtain true happiness in their life. Each of her strategies uses pathos to be effective in achieving her purpose of the poem to influence her audience to consider where they are at in their life and what changes may need to be made, or more importantly, have to be made in order to live a happy life. Oliver does a great job of both grabbing the reader’s attention and making an argument that sticks with the reader.

Oliver maintains a serious and motivating tone throughout “The Journey”, which impacts the way the reader thinks about the context of the writing. Tone is a huge factor in the way a reader considers the work and can be the reason a writing is taken one way rather than another. “The Journey” right away establishes a serious tone in lines one and two, “One day you finally knew what you had to do,” grabbing the reader’s attention and indicating that Oliver has an extensive point she is writing to specifically get across. By using the word ‘you’, it proposes that Oliver is speaking directly to the reader and not necessarily about a character, making the piece personable.  Oliver uses the tone to appeal to the emotional sense of her audience to make her purpose relevant and relatable to anyone. She kept this poem to be openly determined so that she could have a large variety of an audience and they could relate the poem to their own aspect of their own life. It is almost guaranteed that life is going to have challenges and obstacles one must overcome, and this piece is aimed to be relatable to any of those. As well as a serious tone, Oliver’s tone is motivating to inspire the readers to consider where they are at in their life and what changes they may need to make. In lines 23-29, “But little by little, 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 motivates the reader by showing the progress that is made of the character in her writing to reveal that making a change in your life is difficult but it’s often necessary to grow as a person. Oliver’s motivating tone creates the piece to feel personal to the reader and creates it to be relatable to many. It affects the audience in a significant way to not only feel like they want to but feel like they need to change something about their life so that they can know happiness. Oliver’s serious tone convinces her audience to strive for happiness but through her motivating tone she convinces her audience that they deserve happiness and should do whatever it is that helps them achieve that. While this piece is heavy, Oliver is effective in her writing and indubitably attains her intent to inspire her audience and push them to contemplate what in their life may need to change. 

Oliver’s use of repetition with the phrase “you had to do,” also contributes to influencing her audience emotionally to grasp the importance of making decisions to benefit yourself. Using the phrase “you had to do” repeatedly is efficient in the way it makes the poem personal to the reader and, again, motivates them to live their life for themselves. Creating the sense of obligation is an effective use of pathos and, in a way, manipulates the audience to believe as Oliver believes. Each time the phrase is used, it holds the same meaning so that it is emphasized that you are in control of your own life and only you, no other person can make a change or decision for you. When a person is made aware that they hold a specific situation in their hands, it can usually influence them to take initiative and that’s exactly what Oliver’s purpose was meant to be. The use of repetition adds to Oliver’s objective so that even if there may not be a certain aspect someone may need to change or move on from in their life, Oliver still has the reader thinking about it and questioning it. In the last sentences of the poem, “determined to do the only thing you could do – determined to save the only life you could save” (lines 33-36) Oliver tweaks her phrase from “you had to do” to “you could do” and to “you could save.” This achieves the same effect as before but now on a deeper level. Exchanging the word “had to “could” gives the reader more of the message that there is no other choice, that changing something in your life and saving yourself is your only option. This uses pathos greatly in the way of creating an emotional requirement for her audience to consider and really take into account. Oliver’s techniques make the piece feel like it was written specifically for each reader and can relate to them on a deeper level. Through this, you can tell she writes about this from a personal experience and feels passionate about what she wants her audience to take from reading this piece, affecting the reader in another emotional sense of feeling a connection to Oliver herself.  Ending the poem with these lines is successful on Oliver’s part because it leaves the reader thinking about their own situation and that was her intent. 

Oliver could have written from any other angle, but knew that for her specific purpose of motivating her audience to make a change in their life they feel is necessary or one that they know isn’t making them happy anymore, an emotional appeal would be most effective. In order to motivate the audience, Oliver had to come from the way that would stay with the reader and make them feel the way she intended them to feel. Between Oliver’s  tone of the poem to motivate the reader and her use of repetition to create a sense of obligation in the reader, Oliver influences the reader to take their life in their own hands in order to achieve genuine happiness that will last. 
