William Stafford’s poem, “Traveling through the Dark,” recites a story concerning moral issues. Stafford composes a poem of the speaker traveling along a narrow road when he or she comes across a dead deer, which is still carrying a baby fawn. The moral issue of whether to save the baby fawn when no one is watching, or to simply push it into the river is the foundational question of this poem. Through the symbolism of the road, the car, and the darkness, the speaker experiences an intersection of
poem “Traveling through the Dark,” author William Stafford explores the actions of a man who encounters a deer on the side of a narrow road. Before making his decision, the man contemplates his options; save the fawn, or push the doe off into the canyon. A superficial reader may assume the poem is only about the deer, but actually it provides a way to explain the rationale of the narrator when concerning conforming to society. The beginning of the poem mentions how the narrator is “traveling through
“Traveling Through the Dark” by William Stafford and “Woodchucks” by Maxine Kumin utilize various aspects of language to convey their speakers’ contrasting emotions and relationships towards the animals in the respective works. Both authors use diction, imagery, and figurative language to paint the scenes of their poems. Stafford’s work uses dark and simple word choice to present the speaker’s situation to the reader. The speaker does not really commit to strong definitive words. For example, in
“The Worn Path” and William Stafford’s poem “Traveling Through the Dark“ both main characters face a journey in which what they learn along the way is more important than the destination. “The Worn Path” is a story about a frail grandmother, Phoenix, who travels a challenging journey through the woods to get medicine for her sick grandson. She faces many obstacles but her overpowering love for her grandson motivates her along the journey. Secondly, “Traveling Through the Dark” is a story of a heroic
The narrator of "Traveling through the Dark" presents a caring facade. He cites the exact location where he found the deer, "Wilson River road." Considering the fact that finding a deer's carcass was not on his agenda, we are surprised that he looks back on it with such detail. This
both “Traveling through the Dark,” written by William Stafford, and “Woodchucks”, written by Maxin Kumin, the authors discuss about interventions of human beings to animals. Even though the two poems are different in the use of irony, the tone and the sentence structure, they illustrate similar relationships between humans and animals that humans are superior to animals. “Traveling through the Dark” and “Woodchucks” use different irony to represent their relationships