Analysis Of 'Traveling Through The Dark' By William Stafford

Essentially a monologue set within a frame, this poem creates two personae. The anonymous author gives a brief introduction and conclusion. The Wanderer, an aging warrior, who roams the world seeking shelter and aid. The Wanderer’s monologue divides into two distinct parts, the first being a lament for his exile and the loss of kin, friends, home, and the generosity of his king. In nature, he finds absolutely no comfort, for he has set sail on the winter stricken sea. Poignantly, the speaker dreams that he is among his companions, and embracing his king, only to awaken facing the gray, winter sea, and snowfall mingled with hail.

The last few lines in the poem are sentience that have been chopped up into different lines, to help

The poem also uses end rhyme to add a certain rhythm to the poem as a whole. And the scheme he employs: aabbc, aabd, aabbad. End rhyme, in this poem, serves to effectively pull the reader through to the end of the poem. By pairing it with lines restricted to eight syllables. The narrator creates an almost nursery-rhyme like rhythm. In his third stanza however, his last line, cutting short of eight syllables, stands with an emphatic four syllables. Again, in the last stanza, he utilizes the same technique for the last line of the poem. The narrator’s awareness of rhyme and syllable structure provides the perfect bone structure for his poem’s rhythm.

As the poem progresses, the narrator continues to use certain terms that overall portray what he went through.

The novel “Night” is a vivid representation of a man’s loss of faith from the beginning to the end of the catastrophic era in which this book takes place. As a young boy Elie’s inquisitive mind directed him to the synagogue where he would study the Kabbalah’s revelations and mysteries. Here is where “Moishe the beadle,” a friend to Elie, would sit with him in the synagogue and they would talk for hours about the intriguing secrets of Jewish mysticism. One important piece of advice that Moishe told Elie was, “There are a thousand and one gates allowing entry into the orchard of the mystical truth.” This simply meant he would need to pursue these answers on his own. However, Elie believed Moishe would help him bind his questions and answers as well, into one. These meetings were interrupted when Moishe was extracted from the Sighet where he experienced malice.

Driving down a narrow mountain road, “Traveling through the dark,” the narrator of the poem encounters a deer. This line might fool the reader into believing the poem has a happy theme however, the first word of the second line reverses this belief. The deer is actually “dead on the edge of the Wilson River Road” (2, 911). The traveler decides to send the deer over the edge of the canyon,

In his poem, "Traveling Through the Dark," William Stafford presents the reader with the difficulty of one man's choice. Immediately, the scene is set, with the driver, who is "traveling though the dark" (line 1) coming upon a recently killed deer. At first, his decision with what to do with the deer is easy; he knows he must push it off the edge for the safety of other motorists, but then, a closer examination of the deer reveals to the man new circumstances. His decision is now perplexing, and his course of action is unclear. Through his use of metaphor, symbolism, and personification, Stafford alludes to the difficult decisions that occur along the road of life, and the

In “Traveling through the Dark,” the author uses symbolize several time. First, the unborn fawn “lay there waiting, alive, still, never to be born” (line 10-11). Here, the fawn is a symbol of the nature’s future as well as the lack of opportunities: although the mother is dying, the fawn still waits to meet a completely new world. However, the author doesn’t have a choice to save the fawn; instead, the author has to push the mother “over the edge into the river” (line 18). Unfortunately, the fawn will not have the chance to experience the beauty of the word as well as its own life. Using the fawn as a symbol, the author shows that human should pay more attention to and be nice to the nature, or our nature will eventually come to an end. What’s more, the road symbolizes the path of life. In line 12, Stafford claims that he hesitates beside that mountain road. He illustrates that it is hard to make a good choice towards the relationship between human and nature. Although the speaker knows the right path— to keep the road of life clear so that he can move on, he hesitates since it is grim to kill both the doe and the fawn. On the other hand, the tone change throughout the poem helps Kumin demonstrate his attitude towards the animals.

A study done by State Farm shows that there have been about 1.23 million deer and car collisions, with just between 2011 and 2012. Just over that one year time span, the 1.23 million crashes have caused 200 deaths (www.insurancejournal.com). In William Stafford’s poem, “Traveling Through the Dark,” the speaker has to make a decision, whether to throw the doe over the cliff and kill the fawn in the mother or to leave the deer there and possibly jeopardize human lives. Although it may seem cruel to some readers, the speaker’s choice to push the dead pregnant doe off the cliff was the best decision, it prevented human deaths and it saved the unborn fawn unnecessary suffering.

Due to the fact that the narrator could not actually know what the piano player is thinking, the reader can say that the narrator is actually describing his own actions after hearing the musician sing. Based on the lack of emotion given from the narrator and the blending of the narrator and the musician’s actions at the end of the poem, the speaker, has a common voice with the piano player, both of whom are

“Good morning!” Ray said to his coworkers while walking into the office. “Morning Ray.” Many replied. Ray’s tall slender figure towered over his desk as he looked down on a ton of files. He grabbed his coffee, then got to work.

The poem begins with two lines which are repeated throughout the poem which convey what the narrator is thinking, they represent the voice in

speaker of the poem uses reason in the same manner as those that he claims

The poem begins with the narrator's describing the poem as a 'dream' that ''was not at all a dream'', which already causes doubt and tension within the reader. The narrator then goes on to talk about

There is much more to this poem than its literal story. The title, along with the story itself, suggests man's overlook for nature. People seem to travel through oblivious to the consequences of their actions. The driver who killed the deer is an example of this theme. He was also traveling through the dark, as the deer was a "recent killing." The fact that he left it in the middle of the road, with no further thought for it or anyone else behind him, implies his dark nature.