
“The Journey” is a poem written by Mary Oliver that describes the path we all must endure to find ourselves in life. It details how people and society will attempt to knock you off track and tear you down, but you must listen to yourself. It also emphasizes how short and abrupt life can be, so people must find and be themselves fairly quickly. Mary Oliver uses a short, simple, and very cutoff syntax throughout the poem to portray this reality of life being short and sometimes confusing. The word choice, pace, style, and punctuation in “The Journey” help to describe the path everyone must walk during their life to find their individual selves away from societies critiques. 

Mary Oliver’s style of writing is used to emphasize how quickly life goes by. “The Journey” is one long stanza with few periods signaling the ends of sentences. This single stanza can make the poem difficult to read because it is not broken into different thoughts, instead it is just a long string of ideas. Along with the lengthy stanza, the lines in the poem are short, about 3-4 words, and many sentences are broken up between many lines. When the sentences are broken up in this style, it makes them hard to read and can make the reader speed up. In the middle of the poem, the way the line “the stars began to burn / through the sheets of clouds” is broken up causes the reader to speed up and try to make sense of the fragmented sentence. This speediness can be compared to life. As you go through the poem, it begins to get more rushed which also tends to be true about how time seems to go by faster as a person gets older. This gradual quickening of the pace is also symbolic of the fact that as a person gets older, they have less time ahead of them. It’s always said that life goes by very fast, and this is symbolized by the rushed style of the poem. 

Mary Oliver also uses few periods throughout “The Journey”, which causes the poem to seem as if it never slows down. When Oliver writes 

“One day you finally knew 

what you had to do, and began, 

though the voices around you 

kept shouting 

their bad advice –

though the whole house

 began to tremble 

and you felt the old tug 

at your ankles”

 she doesn’t use a period, thus making the fragment extremely long. This portion of the poem can be frustrating for some readers because it could be broken into smaller, more understandable sentences, but it isn’t. Instead, Oliver uses this as a way to show how life is both frustrating and confusing, and also how it never stops moving forward. The punctuation, or lack thereof, is used to emphasize the importance of figuring out what type of person you want to be early on in life, because life is only so long. Along with the rushed style, the way the lines of the poem are broken up force it to be jolty and have sudden stops. The brokenness of the poem causes readers to fumble over some of the lines, thus causing frustration and confusion. This tripping up and frustration in reading can be related to the way that life has many pit stops and obstacles that people have to face. It relates to Oliver’s message of life’s struggles and difficulties that is represented throughout her poem. “The Journey” uses diction to emphasize the idea that life goes on no matter what obstacles you may come across, and that you should move forward and find yourself quickly before it’s too late.

The word choice in “The Journey” is used to point out the importance of being yourself, no matter what other people are thinking or saying, and doing what you were born to do. At the beginning of the poem, a person “finally knew what you had to do, and began”, explaining how they are in the process of discovering their true self. Oliver goes on to say “though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice – – – though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles”, describing how society is attempting to pull the person back into it’s control and take away their individuality. This theme of breaking free from the constraints of those around you is a big piece of what makes this poem so strong. As the person continues on to find their purpose, they “left the voices behind” and begin to hear a new voice “which you slowly recognize as your own”. This voice “keeps you company” as the person travels alone because they have left the expectations and other stresses of society behind and begun living for themselves. Society asks the person to “mend my life” as they are in the midst of forming their own thoughts and becoming their true selves. This symbolizes how society wants to change but can’t because it is stuck in its ways and thoughts. As the person travels deeper into the midst of who they are the “stars begin to burn through the sheets of clouds”, which describes how when people become more like themselves, they see the world and things around them in a new light. The word choice in “The Journey” allows the readers to truly experience the venture it is describing because it emphasizes the need to think your own thoughts and be a creative individual away from the norms of society. 

For parts of “The Journey”, Mary Oliver uses interesting words that create a sense of the unknown in the poem. When describing the way society tries to prevent people from having free thought Oliver writes “the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations”. The words “pried” and “stiff fingers” give readers an uneasy feeling because their sound is so harsh and heavy compared to other diction within the poem. The association of these words can also tend to make readers feel the heaviness of this section, because it references images of a cold and intense nature scene. Also written is “the road full of branches and stones” when talking about the journey one takes to reach their full potential. These words symbolize the hardships and struggle we all go through in life when trying to discover who we are.  The “stars” that begin to burn at the end of the poem symbolize the joy that a person feels when they discover themselves and can embrace who they are. The word choice may seem odd at some points throughout the text, but it relates back to the theme of finding yourself in the struggle that is present throughout the poem. 

In conclusion, Oliver uses many different writing techniques to make “The Journey” a stand out poem. Through her word choice, syntax, punctuation, and style readers get to more deeply understand the theme of growing, learning, and becoming your true self without worrying about what society and other people will think of you. “The Journey” emphasizes the need to break free of the social norms and to stop listening to everyone around you. It makes readers want to find themselves and begin doing what they “need to do”, which is so well described in the poem. “The Journey” is a poem whose syntax and style affect those who read it deeply because it makes you want to jump out of your chair and go after what you want, no matter what society or anyone else has to say about it. 