Life is all abort accepting how our lives have turned out. Sometimes life makes us wonder whether we have made the right decisions or not. All the decisions life throws at us is only to make us stronger as a person. After we have made a big decision all of us come do doubt whether we have chosen the right thing to do. This mental journey of self-assessment is what the protagonist, Mary, experiences in the short story "A Journey" by Colm Tóibín from 2006
Mary has had a hard life, she has seen how hard can be, she has a clinically depressed son, and a paralyzed husband and during the long drive back from the hospital whith her son in the back seat, she think about how her life has turned out to be. The story is told by a And when her life has not come to an end yet, she is forced to take her life into her own hands and decide whether she will live life with two people who do not show their love for her or whether she will take a decision to live a life alone. We as readers do not know the ultimate ending to the short story, as it is an open ending. It is up to the reader to decide how it should end.
B
Flashback is one way for the author to tell whether an episode has happened in the past that has significance for the present. It gives us as readers a better understanding of why Mary thinks like she does. The flashbacks in “A Journey” are not very long, but despite that they give away a lot of information. Some of Mary’s flashback shows a life with happiness, but some of them do also show a life with difficultness. The first flashback, we get in the short story is when you get an insight into David's childhood from Mary's point of view. Because we see it from Mary's point of view we need to make our own impressions.
The flashbacks deals with the important things in her life, most of them are a contrast to how her life has become. The Flashback is about her dead mother in her father's old shop, the rather pleasant experience of taking care of here father on his deathbed, and joyous occasions with her son and husband. Some of the flashback shows a life with happiness, but some of them do also show a life with difficultness. An example of a one of the
