Analyzing Stafford's Poem 'Traveling Through The Dark'

The poem suddenly becomes much darker in the last stanza and a Billy Collins explains how teachers, students or general readers of poetry ‘torture’ a poem by being what he believes is cruelly analytical. He says, “all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it”. Here, the poem is being personified yet again and this brings about an almost human connection between the reader and the poem. This use of personification is effective as it makes the

‘The Darkness Out There’ and ‘The Withered Arm’ are both short stories. The characterization techniques they use are contrasting and similar. Each story is from a different time; ‘The Withered Arm’ being 19th century and ‘The Darkness Out There’ being 20th century. Thomas Hardy writes ‘The Withered Arm’ as a 3rd person narrative whereas Penelope Lively uses a mixture between 3rd and 1st person.

The following is a summary on the short essay The Dark Night of the Soul by Richard E Miller. This short essay is an essay that has been written with a main point always in mind, that reading and writing has very powerful influences people and their imagination but, the act of reading and writing is not being utilized as much in the modern world. Richard has created an essay that proves his point by taking five very different short stories and giving each a twist that helps the reader see the power of reading. As the reader is chronologically going through the essay he or she is given many possible meanings of the essay. The meaning and the

A mental disorder, or mental illness, can be a very serious issue in the world today. Not only today but even back many years ago. There have been many complications with studying mental illnesses, but with the basic knowledge and research of these topics, we can then understand the result of answering the question: How are mental illnesses viewed in Ireland compared to the United States? Looking at examples of mental illnesses around the world including examples from the book Reading in the Dark, written by Seamus Deane will help provide a good understanding of want a mental illness can look like in the life of a child. Although mental illness seems like a broad topic, there is a lot that can be taken away from it. Knowing a basic definition and background, and how mental illnesses were viewed in both Ireland and the United States, in the 1900’s and today, can help one understand how mental illnesses are caused in different countries around the world.

In life people often unexpectedly face crisis which puts to test our moral sensitivity. An analysis of the poem's "plot" the poem opens with the speaker finding a dead deer on the side of the road. Instead of swerving and avoiding the deer the speaker pulls over to move the deer off the side of the road. The speaker discovering of a dead deer is not given as a traumatic or yet an unknown experience. - "it is usually best to roll them into the canyon." The narrator sees this as a normal everyday occurrence and not something that could disturb him or anyone else for that matter, this is not seen unusual but there are sometimes moments in the middle of the ordinary which exceed the ordinary and bring us to a place we would never have thought we would be in. Not everyone has the moral capability of stopping to think of the consequences but this is one of the main points or facts of the poem. “Beside the mountain road I hesitated,” what has stopped him in his intended path? We know that he is stopped by the life inside that run over deer of an unborn baby deer. This series of events are what shows how the author indents the importance of moral values and how life can take an unexpected road. As given in the literary work or “Traveling through the Dark” as the light on the other side of the tunnel may be dark but it does not mean that one should not take the easy path of just driving away without looking at the consequences that life can

The Russian Revolution and the purges of Leninist and Stalinist Russia have spawned a literary output that is as diverse as it is voluminous. Darkness at Noon, a novel detailing the infamous Moscow Show Trials, conducted during the reign of Joseph Stalin is Arthur Koestler’s commentary upon the event that was yet another attempt by Stalin to silence his critics. In the novel, Koestler expounds upon Marxism, and the reason why a movement that had as its aim the “regeneration of mankind, should issue in its enslavement” and how, in spite of its drawbacks, it still held an appeal for intellectuals. It is for this reason that Koestler may have attempted “not to solve but to expose” the shortcomings of this political system and by doing so

Unfortunately, many situations we must face in life are like this. People are not always around to help us through hard times, and most tragedies, such as death, are obstacles that we must overcome individually. As described in the poem though, death is an inevitability that we cannot change, and therefore should not deter us from our path. We must learn to deal with tragedies such as death, as they are unavoidable. These events do have an everlasting effect on us, but they should

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

Richard E. Miller essay “The Dark Night of the Soul” to be an interesting way to think about reading and writing in today’s world. Richard uses the violence in the world to question if our educational system is relevant to keeping us safe and whether the power literature can be used to change the tragic event that happen around us every day.

Thesis: By giving us the reader a more in depth explanation of his work it allows us to understand the meaning within the poem itself, and the life lessons Stafford may have intended to reveal to the readers.

As mentioned in the title and the first line, "Traveling Through the Dark", the darkness creates a tense and disoriented setting, for the narrator is confused on what exactly to do with the carcass. The darkness can also symbolize the insensitivity of man towards nature, a moral darkness. The syntax of the first line is also interesting in that it is not told that the deer is dead until the beginning of the second line, so the poem may start off almost as a happy one until discovered that the deer is in fact dead. The word "dead" is used to kick off the second line, which creates a thud-like sound when read aloud.

First, the speaker had to sacrifice the doe’s unborn fawn to prevent a possibly tragic accident on that road. While driving on the Wilson River Road, a mountainous highway, on a dark night; the speaker encounters a dead doe that was recently hit. Unhurried, he decides to stop and remove it from the road as a courtesy to fellow drivers. He believes, “It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.” The word narrow suggest that he is driving on a

In "Travelling Through the Dark", the literal meaning of the word "swerving" means to physically move to avoid an accident. The fiugurative meaning is to move away to avoid something. The narrator uses imagery and symbolism throughout. The significance that he "hesitated" was because of the internal struggle that he was having after discovering that their was a living fawn inside the deer. The wilderness is listening is used as eaxample of the struggle the narrator has with his conscience about what he had to do. I think the effect it has on him is that it forces him to think of his role as an individual in nature or the natural

Diane dashes through the thick forest, breaking off naked branches until she reaches a dirt road and scurries towards a dirty pickup truck resting in the middle of it. The engine idles, and the strong smell of gasoline mixes with the faint scent of the pines. Diane rushes towards the truck and passes the child through the drivers open window where a young man receives it and wraps the child in a blanket before tucking it safely next to

The poem begins with a literal fork in the road. Almost automatically Frost allows us to picture ourselves as the subject of the poem. His vivid imagery describes how the road looks with the leaves turning colors during the fall season “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood” () we are transported into the poem. Due to the beauty of both paths the speaker wants to travel both roads but he understands that is not possible. The man in the poem does not want to stay a long time in the middle of the two roads so he knows he has to make a choice soon. He begins to examine the roads closely and one seems like the better option but he chooses the other one despite peering onto the path of the seemingly better choice .