Essay - "A Journey" af Colm Tóibín (HJÆLP)!

Hej, har været til terminsprøve idag og jeg tænkte om der ikke var nogen der kunne se på det jeg havde skrevet og eventuelt give noget feedback?

Delprøve II – Essay on “A Journey” by Colm Tóibín.

1. Life is a never-ending circle, when someone dies, someone else is born.
It is a pattern that we all follow; it is a growth that we all go through. Though the choices we take in life make us individuals, there is a basic growth pattern that we all endure. Being born, growing into a teenager, into an adult, into an elderly, and last we will finally become one with the very earth we came from. The journey of life, from we are born till we die is one of the main themes treated in Colm Tóibíns short-story “A Journey”.

The short-story’s protagonist is a married, middle-aged woman named Mary. The story takes place in a car with her and her depressed son, whom she is driving home from the hospital. Before this we are told, in the beginning of the short-story, that David was born nearly after 20 years of marriage between Seamus (Mary’s husband) and herself. David’s first encounter with grave topics such as death was at a young age of merely four. He became the replacement of Mrs Redmond’s (a woman who lived in a nearby cottage) husband, who we are told passed away, just before David was born – this illustrates perfectly my point that when one life pass away another one enters the scene. Mrs Redmond began coming everyday to help Mary, and babysit at night if the she and Seamus were out of town. This is of course is Mrs Redmond’s way to get her mind on something else after the death of her husband, and in that way David becomes a sort of a substitution for her deceased husband. Mary is a loving mother, who despite of her sons’ condition sees through it.

On the journey in the car home from the hospital Mary tries to bond with David, but every time she lets her guards down, and tries to connect with him, she only gets a hurtful answer back. The part on the road were Mary dims the lights of her own car, only to be hit in the face of too strong beams from an oncoming car emphasizes this. ”There was no answer. As a car came towards her, she dimmed her own lights, but the oncoming beams were too strong and she had to fix her eyes on the margin to avoid them” (P, 2 ll. 40-42)
Another way Colm Tóibín uses the car to emphasize how Mary feels. Is when Mary thinks that there seems to be absolutely nothing beyond them, this accentuates that even though David and Mary has a clear past together, she cannot feel it.
“The car’s headlights illuminated a short distance and there seemed always to be absolutely nothing beyond them” (P, 2 ll 47-49)

Colm Tóibín uses the few characters in his short-story to show us, how we all are born, go through life and in the end, depart it. Therefore David symbolizes, in the beginning of the short-story, the newborn and the curiosity of man through all his questions to his mother. “He must have been about four then, going through the stage, she remembered, of asking questions, and wanting to know how everything worked and why” (P, 1 ll. 7-8). Mrs. Redmunds represents the later part of life and her husband symbolizes death that one day we all have to kick the bucket. Mary and Seamus symbolizes in the beginning of the short-story the happy young couple who, just had their first child, but twenty two years later they end up emphasizing, the point that we all have to cash in the chips.

A theme of motherly love can also be found throughout the short-story. Mary wants David to stay at home even though she feels uncomfortable in his presence “if the silence made him comfortable, as it made her uneasy and weary. (P, 1 ll. 36-38)
She wanted David to stay at home, no matter grim his silences, no matter how many days he spent in his bed in with the curtains drawn. (P, 3 ll. 85-86)
If we should elaborate on my statement above, you can say that the cigarette Mary smokes ends up being a symbol of the motherly sacrifices, such as letting a child go, but in this example the sacrifice is that she is willing to smoke a cigarette, though the smoke sickens her, to be able to get to the same wavelength as David. After all if Seamus dies David will be all that she has left.

It is possible to draw parallels to the poem “Lucinda Matlock” by Edgar Lee Masters. Especially the last five lines saying; “What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness, Anger, discontent and drooping hopes? Degenerate sons and daughters, Life is too strong for you – It takes life to love Life.” (P, 1l. 18-23) This underlines my point of the motherly sacrifice. That even though Mary in “A Journey” feels uncomfortable with having David around, she still wants him at home. Because she loves him, even if it makes her feel ill at ease; therefore, it takes a part of her life (a sacrifice) to show her love for him.
“The story of a Marriage” by Andrew Sean Greer can also be used to draw parallels. The poem is in general about marriage, but you can also fit it on Mary and her relation to David, because she has seen it all, she knows that David is depressed, and believes that he never will make anything of him self. She refers to his depression as the silence. Maybe she just is not willing to stand by the facts and acknowledge that her son has a depression or maybe she really have seen it all, and has in fact fully accepted it. “We have seen it all. But what have we really understood” (P, 1 ll. 4-5).

2. The beginning of the short-story from line 1-21, is one big flashback, where Mary looks back at when David was young and how happy (and surprised) she was when she found out that she was pregnant. The reason we see this is to receive background knowledge of the relationship between Mary and David when they were younger, so that we can further in story try to interpret how Mary feels now when David hardly speaks to her. Of course this must be hard on her since he, when he was young, always used to ask her questions about everything. Another important flashback is when Mary looks back at when her father was just about to go meet his maker. “Mary stayed on alone with him, and sat with him. It was, she thought, for both of them a happy time” (P, 3 ll. 115-117). This underlines some of the differences between Mary and David. Since Mary is willing to spend time with her dying father and it just dos not seem like David cares much. Of course he cares “Is he in bed all the time? David suddenly asked her” (P, 4 ll. 126), but just not as much as Mary cared for her father.
… Conclusion is that Life will always come and go, people will always live and die. Buildings will come and go. Sense the world. Feel nature. When did you the last time take a moment to lie in the grass and do nothing? Use your imagination. You can create and destroy. Why not try to create an image of what once were.
“Destruction… after all is a form of creation” – Graham Greene