”A Journey” is a short story by Colm Tóibín. It’s written in 2006. The plot is told by a 3rd person omniscient narrator. The composition of the short story is in chronological order with flashbacks.

The story begins in a flashback where we are introduced to David’s fear of presence. David is an unsteady boy who is afraid of life. To overcome his fear he keeps asking questions about life and people’s presence in the world. The oil painting, Interior with Woman and Child, on picture 1 by Paul Mathey from 1890 could be an illustration of David – a sad, alone boy who don’t feel secure. Who just stands waiting for the next thing to happen? Mrs. Redmond is taking care of him. David feels safe when he is near her:

“Often, when Mary went down to the cottage to collect him, he did not want to come home. But then, once he was back in his own house, he would start to smile again and follow her around asking her questions or, when he was older, telling her what had happened to him at school”[1].

You can tell that he is secure when he is with Mrs. Redmond because he likes staying with her. You can also tell from the quotation above that he looks up to her mother and thinks that she has a large knowledge. He is embarrassed of his stay at the hospital. He can’t look her mother in her eyes afterwards:

“… and for a quick second she caught his eye. He looked away”.

David’s mother, Mary, has thick blonde hair and a large-boned face. She wants the best for David. She would do whatever he likes her to do, just to make him happy. She appreciates him a lot. The appreciation underlies that she had a hard time getting a child in her early days. Therefore she had given up the hope of getting a child. But then, after twenty years of marriage, David was born. She takes the blame of David’s depression. The silence in the car makes her feel unconfident. Therefore she asks for a cigarette to break the ice between them, in spite of the fact that she finds the cigarette smoke in the car almost sickening[2]. She also tries to break the ice by telling jokes:

“I get very tired driving at night. I must be getting old.”

She is in doubt whether she took the right decision when she sent him to the hospital:

“But it was the best thing at the time, wasn’t it? I mean, there wasn’t anything else we could have done.”.

She wants him to stay home, no matter how grim his silences, no matter how many days he spend in his bed with the curtains drawn. But at the same time she is worried for him:

“No one would employ David, she thought, and he was qualified for nothing. She imagined that when she was an old woman she would have him in the room upstairs”.

In spite of the fact that she wants him to stay at home, it also worries her. She is afraid that her decision of sending him to the hospital had affected their relationship. She feels that the decision had affected their relationship because he won’t talk to her and only wants to sit in the back of the car. She keeps asking him to sit in the front of the car to get him closer to her. In that way she also feels him closer to her mentally and not just psychically.
The story probably takes place today. It probably takes place today because depression is a common illness today because there is a lot of pressure on people. The plot also could take place from many years ago. Everyone occasionally feels sad, like we are told in text number four: “Depression” from 2008. Text four, an excerpt from the website of the organization National Institute of Mental Health, tells us that a depression interferes with daily life, normal functioning, and causes pain for both the person with the disorder and those who care about him or her. The description of a depression tallies with the short story “A Journey”. David’s depression has an influence on his daily life, normal functioning and it is also causing pain for those who care about him.

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