“One day you finally knew/what you had to do, and began,/though the voices around you/kept shouting/their bad advice –”
The opening lines of the poem provide the foundation for the narrative. The speaker seems to be addressing the reader directly, but that is merely to bring the reader into the discourse. Perhaps some readers will see themselves in the story while others will not. If those readers who can relate apply the message to themselves, all the better, but, as a literary work, this is an interior monologue. The speaker is in the present and addressing her commentary to a past version of herself. One element of analytical debate is situated in this opening: Who do those voices shouting out advice to the speaker belong to?
“It was already late/enough, and a wild night,/and the road full of fallen/branches and stones.”
The temptation is to assign a literal quality to the shouting voices, but this would go directly against the precise use of language employed by the poet. The speaker engages metaphor throughout, beginning with portraying herself as a home built upon a weak and trembling foundation. The opening lines explicitly reveal that the speaker had a difficult but necessary task ahead of her. and the fact that she is telling the story from a present that is looking back indicates her success. The task is to move away from that unsound house, but since it is a house only in metaphorical terms, one should likely interpret the shouting voices as figurative entities rather than actual voices.
“And there was a new voice/which you slowly/recognized as your own,/that kept you company/as you strode deeper and deeper/into the world”
This quote seems to confirm the theory that the multiple persons in the narrative are really just manifestations inside the speaker’s psyche. The house built on a shaky foundation is even a projection of her personality, and the need to move away from it is a figurative journey toward self-actualization. The reference to the “new voice” is explicitly implicated as being the speaker’s own which further compels an interpretation of multiple identities. If the trembling house is a metaphor for the speaker’s self-image then it is also safe to assume that the world into which she strides is not intended as literally. One can become immersed in a world without literally stepping foot outside their actual house as the persistent popularity of fantasy novels demonstrates. The world in this sense can be interpreted as an alternative to the house filled with voices shouting bad advice, as a larger habitation for the soul.
