




College comes with many obstacles and barriers to finding ourselves, whether we let these things overcome us all depends on our true conscious. Questions like where will your passion take you, will we end up successful, what do we need in order to reach our goals dwell on our shoulders as we transition into this new found adulthood. Mary Oliver contributes to an overall theme of finding yourself within her poem “The Journey” through syntax, word choice, and the hefty literary devices. 

While analyzing the syntax of the poetic lines Mary Oliver allows for stanzas to read easier without stopping the reader before moving onto the next line. The short stanzas usually finish with no punctuation giving the lines a free flowing reading pace almost like a story. Within the first few lines Oliver catches the reader’s attention to create a personal connection between you, the reader and your inner voice. A perspective that life is ongoing and doesn’t comes with breaks is previewed in line 12 “But you didn’t stop” as it is nearly impossible for us as humans to stop what is going on around us, like the poem breaks don’t come often. Whenever Oliver uses an ending punctuation it usually follows a tragedy or hardship within her life, for example “You felt the old tug / at your ankles” (ll. 8-9) she ends the line with a period after she expresses that the old problems that are still nipping at her. Again in lines 13-18 she discusses the wind prying its “fingers” at the sadness while each voice cried, “Mend my life” (Oliver ll. 10). Oliver delivers a strong yet not so obvious line structure, she draws attention to the setup of punctuation and line length in the most discrete way possible. While some poems contain the bare minimum when it comes to punctuation and few contain an ending to every line; Oliver’s simplicity towards strategically placing periods and comas near tragically-meaningful breaks in her life represent much more towards finding yourself.

Oliver offers support for her ongoing theme finding yourself, beyond others expectations within her word choice, for example “There was a new voice / which you slowly / recognized as your own…determined to do / the only thing you could do,” (Oliver ll. 27-29 and 33-34). She expresses her inner conscious as the “new voice” one she has yet to follow and listen too. In the first few stanzas she describes how you have to fight the initial voices of others distracting you by shouting bad advice in order to succeed and find yourself. Throughout The Journey that is her life she states “You knew what you had to do and determined to do the only thing you could do” as she finally comes to the realization that she needs to take her own words first before listening to those of others like she had previously let control her. She grows as an individual coming to the realization that she needed to get a handle on situation before it could shake the “house” (herself) any longer and stand up for herself in order to “save the only life you could save” (Oliver ll. 36).

Metaphor, alliteration, repetition, and imagery are a few examples of literary devices hidden between the lines of Mary Oliver’s poem. “The road of fallen / branches and stones” (ll. 21 and 22) expresses sensory images by allowing us to picture what we want, the writer uses avid descripted words in order to visualize to the reader the obstacles she was faced with to try and keep her from reaching the end. Lines 13-18 Mary Oliver creates alliteration by giving human like qualities to the wind “You knew what you had to do, / though the wind pried / with its stiff fingers / at the very foundations, / though their melancholy / was terrible.” She uses the wind to display a sense of sadness to reflect the many obstacles that attempted to keep her from trusting her first instinct and following her own voice. Imagery is shown throughout the entire poem; it creates a visual image “the stars began to burn / through the sheets of clouds,” (ll. 25-26) 

Through syntax, word choice, and multiple literary devices Mary Oliver showcases and supports her theme finding yourself within The Journey. She proves that even when the old voices are trying to push their bad advice there is a way to overcome it on your own in order to save your own life. Oliver creates a malleable piece that is relatable to everyone’s life. For some the journey may not take as long or have as many twist and turns but no one will have the exact same story as you. The journey Oliver shares with us truly teaches individuals to start trusting themselves and following what their internal voices are telling them not the voices of others.



