Eudamonia and Monomyth in Mary Oliver's "The Journey” and Charles Finn's "Please Hear What I'm Not Saying”

Abstract

The beginning of the present century witnessed what has been called the "eudaimonic turn” in the humanities and social sciences.  Advocates of this trend call for promoting "well-being” rather than dwelling on "ill-being.”  They rely heavily on Aristotle's Ethics and new humanistic-existential psychology. A central conviction of this school of thought is that every human being is born with a "true self” with great potentials that need to be actualized.  The two founding tenets of new eudaimonism are self-realization and self-determination. This also involves the belief that the self is a process rather than a product, which is in agreement with Joseph Campbell's theory of "monomyth.”  Mary Oliver's poem "The Journey” and Charles Finn's poem "Please Hear What I'm Not Saying” provide evidence for the personal journey of the two poets towards self-realization. Oliver refers to the true self in terms of an inner voice that she finally manages to identify as her own despite other voices that attempt to consume it.  Finn uses the image of an inner child that is imprisoned behind numerous false masks.  Seen within the context of the works of the two poets at large, the two poems represent turning points in their life-journeys.