Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” is about overcoming adversity and talks about different instances in which it can be hard for an individual to overcome the adversity. In the poem she uses the word “voices” to help personify the adversity.  Through the poem Oliver uses the phrase “the voices” in different instances in an attempt to present the point that it does not matter what others think of your decisions, it only matters what you think and how you feel about your decisions.  In the beginning of the poem Oliver starts with how hard it can be to try to overcome adversity and get past it.  As the poem progresses she talks more about what can happen once you begin to look at the positive side or have started to listen to yourself instead of what others have to say or even what society has conditioned one to think.

In the poem “The Journey” the first instance of the author using the phrase “the voices” (Oliver pg. 92 line 3) makes the voices seem as though they are imaginary.  The author says, “One day you finally knew / what you had to do, and began, / though the voices around you kept shouting / their bad advice-” (Oliver lines 1-5).  Through this usage of the word voices it seems that Mary Oliver could be describing the voices in the narrator’s head. The author is showing how the narrator is doubting her decisions, because of ideas that have been ingrained in her head by others.  In this instance the author shows how insecure people are about their decisions and how they question their selves.  Oliver then uses the word “shouting” (Oliver line 4) as personification to make it appear as though the voices could be something external and that they are not just made up in one’s head.  In the next line she continues to say the voices shout “bad advice” (Oliver line 5) showing that the voices are not necessarily always right and therefore should not always be listened to. The use of the words shouting and bad advice help illustrate how the author does not think that the voices are necessarily right and instead believes that they are giving bad advice and are shouting it to make it appear as though they are correct.

The next instance is when the author says “each voice cried” (Oliver line 11) in this instance the author has used personification to make the voices come to life.  She says, ““Mend my life!” / each voice cried…”  (Oliver lines 10,11).  Through the usage of the word cried she builds upon the previous personification to make the voices seem as though they are now completely external.  In this instance the author is showing how some people try live their life through others, so by not doing what the voices wanted the narrator is starting to not listen to the voices and not allowing them to feel the original fulfillment that they did.

In the final instance  the author builds off of the personification of the previous instance and says, “But little by little, / as you left their voices behind, / the stars began to burn / through the sheet of clouds,” (Oliver line 23-26) in this part of the quote the author is showing how the speakers outlook on life has changed since she stopped listening to others and instead started to listen to him/herself. She also shows how much detailed and clearer the narrators point of view is because of the voices being left behind.

At the end of the poem Oliver then goes on to say, “and there was new voice / which you slowly / recognized as your own,” (Oliver lines 27-29) through these lines the author shows how easy it can be to lose yourself when you listen to everyone else and that once you begin to listen to yourself it can be hard at first to recognize your own voice, because it has gotten lost and mixed in with everyone else’s voice over time. “determined to do / the only thing you could do- / determined to save / the only life you could save.” (Oliver lines 33-36).  In this section of the poem Oliver addresses how by listening to oneself the speaker began to realize that it was more important to listen to his/her own voice as opposed to letting others tell him/her what to do.  She also stresses how it can become easy to listen to what everyone else says and lose ones sense of self and internal voice in the process.

In this poem Oliver shows the process of an individual struggling to break free of external voices that are telling her what to do and how it can be a complicated process.  In the first instance the voices seem to be internal voices are designed to make the narrator doubt the decision she had made.  The next instance the author uses personification to make the voices appear external and as though they could be someone who is trying to live their life through the narrator, but do not necessarily agree with the decision that the narrator makes.  In the final instance the author builds off of the personification that appeared in the previous instance and talks about how if you listen to the voices it can become very easy to stop listening to yourself and doing what you think is right.  
