When does advice from others cross the line from helpful to controlling? Advice given is not always extremely helpful and can lead to bad decisions, but the intent of advice is primarily to be beneficial. Mary Oliver’s depiction of advice in her poem “The Journey” is unwanted and burdening, preventing the subject from reaching the life they truly want to live and lead. She uses personification and imagery to thoroughly describe this journey and the subject’s limitless impediments, and intends for her poem to be heard as well as read to be most effective to the reader. Mary Oliver, in the poem “The Journey”, uses vocabulary to illustrate resolute obstacles in one’s life and mind and depict the complexity of self-discovery.

Mary Oliver’s exceptional word choice and delivery play a huge role in the effectiveness of her poem on the readers. Her use of “you” in the poem enables her to speak directly to the readers to truly connect them to the idea of their own personal journey. This reflection allows the readers to become aware of the restrictions and weed out the ones present in the journey to finding themselves. The confining forces in the poem are introduced seeking to influence the subject by “shouting their bad advice” obviously in vain as the subject makes it clear the advice he or she receives is of little to no importance (Oliver 4-5). Though many people are unlikely to connect to the struggle Mary Oliver depicts in her poem, she is able to allow everyone to at least understand it by relating the emotional feelings to physical feelings. She uses descriptions such as “the old tug at your ankles” and the “wind pried with its stiff fingers” to help the reader imagine being physically restricted and how this physical constraint is how the subject being emotionally restricted may feel (Oliver 8-9;14-15). The word choice Mary Oliver uses allows the reader to not only imagine this physical and emotional restriction but also understand how hard it is to break from those bonds.

There are people and things that shape people, like family, friends, and society. Starting at a young age children are accustomed to listening to adults and their directions. For a majority of the transition from childhood to teenage years, listening to “the voices around [us]” is an appropriate way to learn from mistakes and about right from wrong (Oliver 3). As teenagers’ societal norms and friends play a great deal in personality and decisions. Teenagers and their friends are closely knit and bond over doing the activities that are trendy simply because everyone else is doing it. Mary Oliver doesn’t specify the speakers age, but the speaker strongly exemplifies the struggles teenagers go through when growing up. The transition into adulthood is when one begins to know the right and wrong decisions for himself or herself, disregarding the opinions and decisions of others. Like teenagers during this transition, the speaker hears the “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. Though it becomes easier to ignore, parents become a nagging voice in their children’s lives during their adult transition, especially during the college process. putting in their input about where they should go, how far they should go, and even what they should major in. This pressure and prying can affect a whole household similar to how the speaker in this poem seems to be restricted by these voices and opinions that cause the “whole house to tremble” (Oliver 6-7). Throughout life people will try not only to influence the decisions of others but will also try to stop their growth and journey by requesting help. Oliver tries to tell the reader to continue moving forward and ignore the cries for help in order to successfully continue his or her own journey. She shows how difficult this breaking free is for the speaker, as “the wind pried with its stiff fingers” and yet “little by little…you left their voices behind” (Oliver 14-15, 23-24). Though the forces that seem to interfere with journeys the most seem predominantly external, the biggest struggles often come from within. 

At end of the day choosing to go down one’s own path and ignoring the overwhelming opinion of others is possible, but disregarding the voice inside one’s own head is found to be significantly more difficult. An internal struggle is the additional way to look at this poem, more specifically, the mental illness known as schizophrenia. A person with schizophrenia struggles to separate reality from fantasy and separates the association of thought, emotion, and behavior, leading a person with schizophrenia to act inappropriately. People struggling with this may literally feel as if they have “voices around [them] shouting” and “[tugging] at [their] ankles” begging them to mend their own life and help the disease inside of them (Oliver 3-4;8-9). Correlating to the saying “my body is a temple” the house Oliver talks is the subjects body and “the whole house began to tremble,” refers to the voices inside the subject’s head causing their body to feel overcome (Oliver 6-7). Knowing someone who struggled with schizophrenia, their reality often got clouded and they struggled with recognizing themselves amongst the many voices inside of their head. This schizophrenic person’s journey that Oliver could be talking about eventually begins to clear and “there was a new voice which [they] slowly recognized as [their] own” (Oliver 27-29). Oftentimes people with depression and anxiety also struggle with carrying on and fighting through their mental illness. Mental illnesses make a person feel stuck, as if they were being pulled back by themselves with “stiff fingers at the very foundations” (Oliver 15-16). Mental Illnesses are common in 1 in 5 people, so a significant amount of readers will be able to personally connect to this poem, identifying the speakers struggles as similar to their own. Mental illnesses are a long and hard struggle and those who deal with it often find themselves trying to break free from their internal struggle, something the readers can connect with.

By having the subject, “us”, reject the external and internal forces, the readers are able to reflect on their lives and decisions made thus far. With this they can determine whether they made these decisions with their own desires and interests at heart, or by the influence of others. With this reflection the reader is truly able to connect to the speaker of the poem, and relate his or her own struggles and maturing to the speaker’s. This shows the power of language and how Mary Oliver effectively uses only one word to connect to the reader and help them understand the message and struggle of the speaker. Not only will the reader understand the speaker, but will be able to identify their internal and external struggles that slow them down from taking care of the only life they have power over, their own. 

The internal and external struggles people may fight against and manage on their own help them undergo the journey they go through to find themselves, as illustrated in Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey”. Oliver used her poem and its language to show the reader the speakers struggle, whether a struggle with their surrounding environment or within themselves. She is also able to connect the readers and show them the importance of choosing their own destination and controlling their own lives. Being at a college level, this work implores the readers to make their own decisions in choosing their majors or taking control over their decisions early on in their life. 
