Mary Oliver’s “The Journey” expresses the hardships and fulfillment of what life can throw at you. Mary Oliver was born in 1953 in Ohio. She began her writing career after she moved to Provincetown Massachusetts where she created American Primitive,which received a Pulitzer Prize. She had created many books.  At the beginning of the poem, Oliver describes how there are people and things that will try and distract you from reaching your main goal. However, at the end of the poem, it is significant that the only thing motivating yourself is yourself. You are finally listening to yourself and is able to set a path and a direction for yourself in which you can reach your goals. This piece of work is written in a second person narrative making it easy to relate to the poem to understand the journey as if it were your own. The underlying message from Oliver’s “The Journey” is that you must listen to yourself and not let others steer you away from reaching your main goal. Although it may be hard, you must put yourself above others to reach what you will ultimately achieve.  

In the poem, one of the main underlying themes is to not let others distract you. People are always going to try and get your attention by doubting you or asking for your attention, but it is up to you to rise above it all and be selfish in order for you to reach your final goal. In the first 12 lines of the poem, Mary Oliver describes how there were voices around you shouting bad advice, which would lead to you giving them your attention. Also, when it states "Mend my life!” (line 10), it represents how people want others to pay attention to them, ultimately taking you off course of your task. This can cause you to be lead astray from your goal, causing you to pay attention to others rather than yourself. Oliver is trying to convey this message of keeping a determined mind through the use of point of view making it easy to imagine what it is that you feel while people are trying to distract.   

From the beginning of “The Journey”, Oliver makes it clear that it is not always easy trying to only listen to yourself. There are many voices at the beginning of the poem trying to distract you, but in lines 27-29, you realize that the only voice you recognize is yourself; “and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own”. You cannot reach the end point of your journey by listening to others’ advice. You only know what it is that you want to do, and you can only keep yourself motivated without the disappointment of people distracting you from your end goal. Lines 14-15, “though the wind pried with its stiff fingers” represents others opinions steering you away from what it is you’re trying to do. However, after the next couple of lines of you going through hindering events, people tugging on your ankles, people shouting their bad advice at you, and the wind prying at you, you hear only your voice that has been stuck with you  throughout your journey even though if your voice wasn't as prominent as it was at the beginning (Oliver). It is described as a necessity to continue to only listen to yourself in the poem because that is how you reach the end of your journey, without others input. 

One of the main points mentioned at the end of the poem is how the only person that you could save is yourself. The last two lines signify that you have to be selfish in order to achieve what you want. In the case of having a journey and a final goal in mind, you have to be able and willing to only listen to your own voice and stay determined. With the theme of others distracting you from your goal, you have to pay attention to yourself and your needs, rather than putting others above yourself. In the middle of the poem it states, “But little by little, as you left their voices behind” (lines 23-24) which means that you stopped paying attention to them and focused on yourself. In the end, you can only achieve something by listening to your own voice, and ignoring people and things that hinder you on your track to reach your goal. This message is important to the poem as a whole because it demonstrates how at the beginning of the poem you have the choice to listen to others around you, or let things hinder your advancement towards your goal, but if you continue to stay determined and listen to yourself, you will find that it is only you in the end because your voice and advice had been summoned within yourself since the beginning of the journey.

Mary Oliver makes it clear that it is necessary to listen to your voice and do what you want to do to reach your goals. All of the themes that she has provided in her second narrative poem are related because it all follows the main purpose of listening to yourself. Not letting others distract you helps make it possible to focus on yourself and your needs. You can only achieve what ever you want by putting yourself first and staying determined to reach your goal. 
