
Mary Oliver wrote a poem entitled The Journey that helped bring the idea of bringing your voice to the surface. Everyone tries to influence others in their everyday life, whether it be negative or positive. Other people try to implement their own opinions and ideas by spreading rumors and persuading others in order for them to gain more people who follow one distinct voice. Society has become a critical part of life and due to that it makes it easier for others to fall behind and not begin to gain their own beliefs and ideas. That is a struggle that everyone has to overcome in order to save the only thing that can be saved when being exposed to so many ideas. Oliver wants her audience to learn to create their own voice and be proud to embody that voice that they have created for themselves. Mary Oliver depicts her main idea that everyone struggles to overcome breaking away from the basic, general ideas that others have when she wants her readers to create a voice of their own for themselves. In the poem that Oliver wrote, the theme of generating your own voice is very present and she appeals to this main idea by using pathos, by bringing in personal emotion and thoughts that can appeal to all readers so that the audience can feel inspired. Her style of writing also helps influence the idea that she hopes her audience will create a voice for themselves by using first person in her poem so that the readers feel as if she is personally talking to the reader. 

Throughout the poem The Journey, Oliver uses pathos to appeal to her readers and bring purpose to her main idea that she is trying to imply on her poem. By bringing in personal appeals to the audience, her main idea that people need to create their own voice and idea separate from the ones that are “acceptable” within society becomes more empowering to the audience. Finding someone’s personal voice takes time because people need to find what inspires them to be a better person than they were today and that process takes time. Within the poem, Oliver states that “and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own…” (Oliver 27). The author is using pathos in order to bring emotion and purpose to the end of the poem. The emotion that this sentence brings to the table is that self-discovery does take time because she is intending for her audience to create ideas in their own mind that inspire them to live their life to the fullest. Oliver is concluding that the audience will always have outside influences like their parents, society, teachers, friends, government, and so much more trying to implant this image of what they believe is acceptable and in that process they are shutting down the voice that is burning to grow within the reader’s mind. Oliver even says “the stars began to burn through the sheets of the clouds, and there was a new voice…” (Oliver 25). This sentence brings an emotional fire to the table, in which she used pathos to bring this fire. The emotion and ideas that the audience would have got out of this sentence was that as their voice and ideas begin to grow, they begin to become more passionate and heard by those other voices that normal tend to overpower other voices that are trying to be heard. By using pathos throughout the poem, Oliver is appealing to the audience about a topic that others might be too afraid to talk about because they might feel as if the by talking about it they are ironically incorporate their thoughts into others. Oliver uses words like “you” so that she is not talking about her own ideas and voice but trying to encourage the reader to create their own voice. 

The style of writing that Oliver uses in her poem helps pled her theme of wanting her audience to finding their own voice and letting their voice be heard even though others will try to shoot it down. One style of writing that she used in her poem was the context in which wrote the poem. Oliver wrote the poem in third person, and she did this because she wanted to make it more relatable to her readers in order to get her overall theme across. This helps the audience go into a deeper meaning with the poem because it lets the audience feel as if Oliver was personally talking to them telling them that it is okay for their voices and thoughts to be heard even if others try to belittle them. There are so many scenarios in life that so many outside voices have tried to belittle other voices just so that they feel more life and power within their voice. Oliver also uses figurative language within her style of writing to help get her idea across to the audience. Oliver says “though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations…” (Oliver 14). Personification is used in order to help bring this sentence and branches of the wind to life. She gave the wind human like qualities so that it can become more obvious to the reader that outside influences are all around, whether it be in nature or with human beings, outside influences can impact a certain tone that is added into the audience’s personal voice. That tone can be negative or positive but it does have an impact on the voice that the reader creates for themselves. Idioms are also used within the poem. For example, Oliver says “and you felt the old tug at your ankles…” (Oliver 8).  This idiom helps impact the theme because it helps the reader begin to feel what is being said because everyone has had something that they wanted to get off their chest that was weighing them down. The tug on her ankles was pulling her down and holding her back from finding her own voice within themselves. By tugging on someone, that individual loses the strength that is needed in order to fight back sometimes until they are inspired by some words of encouragement which is what this poem is; words of encouragement to help remind the readers that sometimes getting rid of the dead weight and fight through a struggle can help bring out a voice that was hiding inside all along.  She wanted to make the poem relatable for all the readers by using figurative language like personification and idioms so that the reader feels a stronger connection to Oliver’s message that she is trying to get across to the audience.

The audience is a major component when writing a poem because the author wants to send a direct message to your audience and think about who the audience is so that they can appeal to them. Within the poem, Oliver writes in third person so that the poem can feel more relatable and also it feels like she is directly speaking to me as a reader. Oliver says “you” a numerous times and that makes the poem more personal and more relatable. In the very end, she ties the whole idea together that she has put in place for her audience in which she says “the only thing you could do- determined to save the only life you could save” (Oliver 34). This idea hits hard with the audience because Oliver is telling the reader that in order to save other lives the reader needs to say their own live by incorporating their own voice that can be heard and not shut out. Having a voice that is heard is an idea that is compelling to the audience because it takes time to find a voice that someone is confident in. Oliver appeals to her audience more by encouraging them to create a voice of their own that they are proud to embody and support. This idea helps the overall audience to be everyone and in order to draw them in, she wrote about a topic that everyone struggles with at one point and this is a good strategy to use because then most people will be able to gain emotions when reading the poem. 

Creating a voice, and ideas that you can be proud of can take a long time, it is a slow process.  Mary Oliver depicts this idea in a unique way that draws attention to her poem for others to read. It relates to a struggle that everyone encounters in life, whether it be when you’re an adolescent or an adult, it is a process that is important because you want to have your own separate ideas and voice compared to everyone else. Sometimes creating your own voice can help solve the internal struggle you are having with yourself because you have no idea what outside voice to listen to when you should be listening to your own. I am 18 years old, and just now finding ideas and a voice that I am proud to incorporate within my everyday life. Outside influences have tried to impact the ideas and voices within my own mind but part of the struggle was saving my own voice and silencing the others.
