Analysis of Colm Tóibin's Short Story, A Journey

Life is a journey, a cycle. We start somewhere and end somewhere, we are on a round trip. We experience different seasons and grow both physically and mentally. But some point in life all of us realize that we want last, live forever. From a very early age on we are being told that we all one day will pass away and be buried in the ground. The short story:”A Journey”, written by Colm Tóibin, takes us on a journey together with a young boy called David and his mother Mary.

The short story, A Journey, starts off in a dialogue, in medias res, between the son and his mother, where we also are introduced to a 3 rd person narrator. The story contains flashbacks, which are being told through the mothers point of view. ”... but random images of places in the past kept coming to her, and there was nothing she could do to stop them … She saw the portrait of her mother hung after she died in the unused musty parlour over her father's shop in Ferns.” In the introduction the reader is told that David was born after twenty years of marriage and him being the only child. Mary and Seamus actually gave up hope of ever having a child but suddenly Mary got pregnant and David was born. The story deals both with birth and death, two main elements in the theory of the ”cycle of life”. We also find elements in the story that refer to religion and Christianity. ”well, God talk your soul because he loves you.” The story takes place in the country side with a small church and a small country national school, where Seamus, Davids father, had been principal.

As a young boy David was very curious and he asked his mum allot of question, like all four/five year olds do. He was often babysit by Mrs. Redmond and started to get a close bond to her. The co...

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...s washing clothes in the next room. This picture could therefore be an example of how depression occurs because it seems that the boy doesn’t receives the attention he needs, especially from his mother.

The way we have been raised and the relationships we build towards our parents and other individuals have a huge impact on our entire life. Small situations that accour in or during our childhood, can have vital effects and consequences the rest of our life's. Neglection and age differents can be one of many reasons due to an unstable development. David was confronted with some of these things along with topics as death, already at an early age. This caused a deep depression and superficial relationship with his parents and others. Life is something extremely valuable and it is extremely important how we influence and effect others. We are all on the “same” journey.