“ One day you finally knew what you had to do…” (lines 1-2) this is where Mary Oliver’s story began. “The Journey” by Mary Oliver is showing people what she wants to do with her life and the obstacles she is overcoming to get what she wants. Mary Oliver seems to be always coming back to “the voices” she hears throughout her life. The concept Mary Oliver is trying to portray in this poem is to look beyond the negative voices, and thoughts that she has always been influenced by. She portrays this by using specific words and having a specific tone throughout the poem. This poem is using the message of voices internally and externally which contributes to Mary Oliver’s journey of finding herself. 

At the beginning of her poem, Mary Oliver is starting to show an interest in her feelings and how she realizes she is starting to feel pulled down from hearing so many negative voices in her head and from society. For example, in “The Journey”, on (lines 3-5) Oliver states that “though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice-” in those lines Oliver is talking about the impact that the external voices she is hearing from her family, friends and society have on her self esteem. The specific words she uses portrays how she is feeling about all the negative thoughts she is hearing from her peers. Words like tremble, bad, shouting all had a negative impact on Oliver and affected her judgment on making decisions she thought would be good for her, or a decision she thought would make her happy. These external voices she is constantly hearing seem to have taken over her thought train and taken away her voice, which she cannot even hear anymore due to the overwhelming amount of voices she hears day to day from other people.   

Mary Oliver hears these voices throughout the entire poem, but they seem to be coming from her head as well as outside of her head. She states “ and you felt the old tug at your ankles.” (lines 8-9) She does not mean someone was literally pulling and tugging at her feet, she is trying to explain the pressure she feels from the voices that are coming from inside her head that have formed due to so many different voices coming at her all the time. The voices that seem to be coming from her own head are thoughts as if she is trapped, and most of all the thoughts want her to be free and happy. For example on (line 10) Mary Oliver writes, “ Mend my life!” The fact that these are the voices that are coming from the inside, seems like she is really looking to find a way to get away from all the negative thoughts she is having and or hearing from both herself and from people. With all the voices coming from her own head, she is jumbled and confused. She does not know what to do or think at this point.  

Oliver has all of these voices running through her head. Whether they are her own or they are coming from the outside of her head, for example, her family, friends, and society.  From the beginning, Mary Oliver does not know who she is, and so many people influence her that she starts to convince herself that she might as well start to think negative about all of the decisions she is making. In the middle of it, she starts to realize that maybe she does have a voice, and that maybe she can start to think positive thoughts about the decisions she is making without having to worry what the external voices are saying to her. For example, on (lines 12-16) Oliver writes “But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations,” She begins to have courage at this point of the poem and is finding that she knows what she had to do to ignore all of the negative and discouraging voices and start listening to the positive things. She knows that there are going to be challenges with this, just like there were in the beginning and that is why is was in the situation she was in at first, but now she is willing to do what it takes no matter what is in her way trying to stop her. At this point, she is worrying about the internal voices because she has control of those voices, while executing the external voices due to the fact that she has no control over what other people are saying to her. 

In conclusion, Mary Oliver writes a poem that shows how much a person can change and find him or herself if they try hard enough and do not let anything get in the way. Even if it is a close friend or family member that voices their negative thoughts or opinions. In this poem one of the biggest negative voices she was listening to was her own voice. Becoming confident and determined is a difficult thing to do, especially in her case. She seemed to really struggle with that aspect of her life. She suddenly had a change of heart and decided to take action and stop listening to the bad voices that had influenced her life for some time now. She knew what she had to do and she did it. Oliver wrote at the end of her poem “determined to do the only thing you could do- determined to save the only life you could save. “ (lines 33-36) She saw that there was nobody who she could do anything for and vice versa. There was the only person who could make herself truly happy and confident, and that was herself. She was a completely different person by the end of the poem and was not going to go back to listen to the negative internal or external voices she had been listening to her whole life. 
