The Speaker
The speaker addresses an unidentified “you” in the opening line and proceeds from there to make this poem an interior monologue that appears to be one-half of a one-sided conversation. The use of the second-person perspective allows the reader to become the other person in this discourse if they choose. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that the speaker is actually addressing herself in what really is simply a monologue.
The speaker is addressing—somewhat paradoxically—both a younger and older version of herself as her monologue is taking place in the present with a version of herself from the past. The interior monologue reveals that the speaker has undergone a significant evolution in maturation. The young version of herself being addressed was a person who was hounded by multiple voices asking her to fix their problems. The speaker uses metaphorical language as disguise which ultimately leaves the specifics ambiguous. The bad advice which was constantly being shouted may have come from actual people, or they may have been from other voices in her head which she has now silenced.
The repetition of the idea that she knew what she had to be done seems very suggestive that the shouts and bad advice were coming from inside the house since she also metaphorically describes her being as a house that has started to tear come apart at its foundation. She also adopts metaphor to describe how she took to the road even though it was late and dark and stormy and terrifying. But this is the thing she had to do: to leave those voices behind. And as she does, she hears a new voice, and it keeps her company as she leaves the old crumbling house behind her and heads out into the unexplored world. Gradually, she realizes that this new nurturing voice is her own and it has been responsible for engineering a brand-new determination to save herself from the devastating effects of negativity.
