Traveling Through the Dark by William Stafford
"Traveling Through the Dark" is a poignant poem by William Stafford that explores themes of responsibility, life, and moral decision-making. Set on a narrow mountain road, the speaker encounters a dead doe that presents both a physical hazard for passing vehicles and a moral dilemma regarding its unborn fawn. Stafford writes in the first person, which creates an intimate and immediate connection between the speaker's experience and the reader. As the speaker grapples with the decision of whether to save the fawn or to prioritize the safety of other travelers, the poem delves into deep ethical considerations regarding human interaction with nature. The narrative unfolds in structured quatrains and a concluding couplet, utilizing effective poetic devices such as slant rhyme and sound patterns to underscore the emotional weight of the situation. Ultimately, the speaker makes a difficult choice, reflecting on the broader implications of human beings’ responsibilities to the natural world. This poem invites readers to contemplate their own choices in the face of ethical dilemmas, making it a powerful meditation on the intersection of human life and nature.
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Traveling Through the Dark by William Stafford
First published: 1962; in Traveling Through the Dark
Type of poem: Lyric
The Poem
William Stafford’s “Traveling Through the Dark” is a short poem of eighteen lines, divided into four quatrains and a closing couplet. The title clearly describes both the literal and the figurative situation in the poem as well as its governing metaphor: The speaker himself is traveling through the dark on a narrow mountain road, and by extension, so is everyone.
The poem is written in the first person, giving an immediacy and directness to the experience; the reader is there with the poet, though he tells the story in the past tense. Many poets choose to speak through a created voice, or persona, but one senses in this poem that Stafford is speaking directly from his own experience. By sharing his personal experience so vividly, Stafford gives it an immediacy, authority, and power that helps one make it a part of one’s own.
The first stanza begins with a description of the setting and the context of the events which follow. The speaker is traveling at night on a narrow mountain road and comes upon the body of a dead deer. Because the road is so narrow, he realizes that the dead deer is a hazard to other drivers, who might swerve suddenly to avoid it and drive off the road into the river canyon and be killed.
Stanza 2 shows him getting out of the car to look at the deer; he discovers that it is a doe, only recently dead. As he drags it off the road, he realizes that its belly is unusually large. In stanza 3, he discovers the reason: Inside the dead doe is an unborn fawn, still alive. He hesitates, not sure what to do. Should he try to save the fawn? Is there some way to rescue it, although its mother is dead? Should he be more concerned with the safety of other travelers in the dark and the fact that the dead deer is a dangerous road hazard?
While he hesitates in stanza 4, he notices the car, which seems animal-like to him as it aims its parking lights and purrs its engine. He stands in the glow of the taillights and watches the exhaust of the car turn red. Around him, the car, the doe, and the unborn fawn, he hears nature listen, waiting for him to make a decision.
In the final couplet he makes his decision, the only one he can possibly make if he acts responsibly for all involved; he pushes the doe over the edge of the canyon and into the river. The decision is difficult because he has realized humankind’s responsibility for the whole natural world, especially the animal world. It is, however, the only possible decision, because even if he had the instruments to do a cesarean section, he could not keep the fawn alive, and to leave the deer there on the road might cause others to die as well; in their swerving to avoid the deer, they might veer off the narrow canyon road and crash down into the river.
Forms and Devices
Stafford uses poetic form with startling effectiveness in this poem. His quatrains use an abcb slant rhyme pattern (“road” with “dead,” “killing” with “belly,” “waiting” with “hesitated,” and “engine” with “listen”) with great effectiveness; the slant rhyme undercuts any romanticized notion that being in nature is an unadulterated delight. He also uses the sound reinforcements of assonance and alliteration; in stanza 1, for example, there is “dark,” “deer,” and “dead”; “river,” “road,” and “roll”; and “might,” “make,” and “more.” The repetition of sounds, as subtle as it is, intensifies the nuances of the speaker’s experience and helps to lead him (and the reader) to the final action, which must be done without any “swerving.” Stafford also builds an effective movement from external to internal action, and from physical to moral responsibility; he emphasizes this process with the pause in the middle of the poem (line 12) in which he hesitates in order to decide the best course of action to take. Another important poetic device is the use of puns, or wordplay, here intensely serious rather than comic. Besides the dual meaning of “swerving,” for example, there is the dual meaning of “still” (line 11): The fawn continues to live, but it is quiet as well (as is the speaker).
The central device of the poem, however, is the use of action as metaphor. The decision of one person is exemplified and amplified to represent a decision for all people, in any time and place. The decision is also a specific answer in a specific situation to the question of one’s individual and communal responsibility to the environment in which one lives. Because Stafford has deliberately understated his case, both through an objective point of view (he tells what he thinks, but not what he feels, about the situation) and a slant rhyme scheme, each of which avoids the obvious in sense and structure, he has allowed readers to make their own emotional responses, without any poetic sentimentality.
Bibliography
Andrews, Tom, ed. On William Stafford: The Worth of Local Things. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.
Holden, Jonathan. The Mark to Turn. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1976.
Kitchen, Judith. Writing the World: Understanding William Stafford. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1999.
Pinsker, Sanford. “William Stafford: ’The Real Things We Live By.’” In Three Pacific Northwest Poets. Boston: Twayne, 1987.
Stafford, Kim. Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford. St. Paul, Minn.: Graywolf Press, 2002.
Stitt, Peter. “William Stafford’s Wilderness Quest.” In The World: Hieroglyphic Beauty: Five American Poets. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985.