The Journey by Mary Oliver - Essay Example

In The Journey, the poet Mary Oliver tends to refer to the journey of life that an individual undertakes on one’s way to maturity and fulfilment. In the poem the poet refers to the distractions and the obligations that happen to hamper the journey of a person in the essential human quest to become an individual, and how the human intellect could set aside these distractions so as to listen to one’ consciousness, which continues to act as an ever present and benign guide. Time and again Mary Oliver refers to the forces that push an individual to conform to the pressing social norms and the innate human capacity to set aside these norms so as to emerge to be a fulfilled individual.

In the poem The Journey, Mary Oliver supports this theme in a vivid and elaborate manner by resorting to the poetic devices like tone, metaphor and symbolism. If one attempts to discern the essential tone of the poet that is her innate sense of how she is perceived by the audience she is addressing, it comes out to as being quintessentially serious and sombre. The poet’s conception of her primary audience is benign and friendly and she intends to convey a message that is innately serious and insightful.

To convey the inherent meaning of the theme that the poet has affiliated to, the poet resorts to free verse with a meagre sprinkling of the internal rhyme as she says,”. you finally knew/ what you had to do.” By subscribing to this ponderous and wistful tone, the main objective of the poet is to capture the overall gravity of that moment when a person decides to be responsive to the inner voice within one so as to be able to live an authentic life. In the poem The Journey, Mary Oliver also affiliates to an extended metaphor of a physical journey as a metaphor to stand for the very personal, lonesome and painful journey in the direction of individual change that gets amply vivid as she says, “But you didn’t stop/ you knew what you had to do.

” Though the title of the poem that is The Journey happens to be quiet explicit about this metaphor that stretches as a dominant theme throughout the length of the poem, yet within the poem this metaphor remains implicit. In a larger context a reader simply could not help admiring Mary Oliver’s usage of such an unambiguous metaphor and a plane language to contrive a poem that is imbued with a meaning that is so deep (Norris 26). The usage of the extended metaphor throughout the poem connotes a deep connection with and reverence for the natural world that is so akin to being Dickinson, as she conveys such a sombre message in such an unadorned and plain manner (Gatta 142).

It goes without saying that Mary Oliver’s selection of everyday concepts and register indeed makes this poem accessible to a wider pool of audience. One also simply cannot help noticing the plain and insightful symbolism that Mary Oliver resorts to in The Journey to embellish the predominant theme of spiritual growth with an extensive and understandable meaning. For instance when Oliver conveys that in the quest for personal meaning and relevance an individual needs to walk along a,” road full of branches and stones”, the branches and stones referred to in this line happen to symbolize the hardships and ordeals that a person will have to contend with on the road to spiritual maturity.

Again as Oliver refers to, “The stars began to burn through the sheets of cloud”, the “sheets of cloud” symbolize the grave uncertainty and doubt that a person has to contend with as one breaks apart from the social norms and personal obligations and ‘stars’ here connote the deep insight that emerges in the inner recesses of an individual’s consciousness as one breaks apart from the society in the quest for spiritual maturity. This symbolism is indeed moving as it is at this point that an individual comes to realize the voice of one’s heart, a voice that actually saves one. The poem