Analysis of Colm Tóibins Short Story, A Journey Essay

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 Tà ³ibin, 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†¦show more content†¦Later, as he turned into an adult he got a serious depression. He even enrolled into a hospital in order to receive treatment for it. Maybe he has a tendency to be obsessed with negative aspects of life such as death, or he could have genetic causes, since his grandma hung herself, probably due to depression. â€Å"She saw the portrait of her mother hung after she died in the unused musty parlour over her fathers shop in Ferns.† On their way home to Seamus, Mary tries to start a conversation with her son, but he refuses to talk to her. He wants to remain in silence, something that possibly comforts him, but makes her feel uneasy. Deep down inside she wishes that everything could be as in the old days. She lives somehow in her past, since her mind often dwells on â€Å"the good old days†. She has a hard time to accept reality, and longs for it to change. This gives her strength to concur each single day, keeping her spirit high and remaining positive, even though she is surrounded by â€Å"clouds†. â€Å"She dreamed now of going back to Cush with him, of a bright summer day and the light from the sea giving him back something he lost, ah old vitality he seemed to have willfully discarded. She thought if he could walk on the sand in his bare feet, it might lift his spirits, but she sighed as she realized that nothing would be as quick or simple.† She tries to get beneath