Traveling throguh the Dark by William Stafford

The main theme in the book, The Dark is Rising, is obviously the conflict between the dark and light. It is one of the many suspenseful fantasy books about the battle between good and evil, Susan Cooper wrote about the dark, light,

Most curriculums being taught to students withhold a mass amount of history. Some may do this because they feel some events do not have the same importance as other topics being taught. Such topics for example would be the rape and sexual exploitation of thousands of African American females during the time periods where racism and segregation was the norm. It is important for people to be educated about the horrific events that these women went through without justice. It is also essential because it shows the amazing activism Rosa Parks took part in. Most people are often just taught about Parks’ actions on the bus. At the Dark End of the Street by Danielle L. McGuire shows how Rosa Parks and many other dedicated their lives to receive equality not only for themselves, but for all African Americans in the south. Danielle L. McGuire’s work is an amazing way for people to not only learn more of Rosa Parks story, but to get a better understanding of what all African American woman had to deal with during this time period. The realism of sexual violence and its dominant impact on the African American women was one of the many events that helped ignite the Civil Rights Movement. McGuire wrote At the Dark End of the Street in order to resolve the negligence of this reality.

Anthropology and genetics are two fields that, when put together, discover some amazing things. Most of these amazing things are written in the book The Journey of Man, by Spencer Wells. In it, he explains where humans originated from, and how we came to populate the entire globe. It is both humbling and riveting, and a great start to understanding how much work truly goes in to studying our past.

The quote "Character is what you are in the dark" - Dwight Lyman Moody has a few meanings. Mostly it means that you're different when you're alone. When you're around people they are influences of some sort. If you get into a situation when you're with people you might react differently than if you were alone, resulting in a different outcome. A lot of the time people aren't their true self around friends, or family, or whoever it may be for many reasons. A big reason is they don't want to be judged. Maybe they wanna look "cool" or get popular for something. Maybe they think they'll be looked at differently for being who they truly are. So basically fear of what others think keeps us from being who we really are. Fear can make us act different,

“In a Dark time” by Theodore Roethke gives a retrospect into the inner turmoil’s of finding oneself through a haze of doubts in till reaching a moment of clarity. Each section of the poem describes a different emotion, or inner thought that spirals from fear of death, to emotions of desire. The use of imagery between nature and uncertainties of the narrator give a glimpse into Roethke’s own mind during the time he wrote this poem. Without hundreds of pages Roethke created a poem that connects readers to their own self-doubts and struggles of finding ones way again.

Darkness at Noon, written by British novelist Arthur Koestler in 1940, is a criticism of Stalinism and the methods used by the Communist Party in the USSR. The novel was set in 1938 during the Stalinist Great Purge and Moscow show trials. Even though the story depicts actual occurrences, it does not specifically name either Russia or the USSR, but the characters do have Russian names while other generic terms are used to depict individuals and associations. For instance, the Soviet government is alluded to as "the Party" and Nazi Germany is alluded to as "the Dictatorship." Joseph Stalin, a terrorizing dictator, is represented by "Number One." The novel is a strong and moving picture of a Communist revolutionary caught up in the terror

The Luminous Darkness Howard Thurman removes the window dressing in the African American experience of segregation in America. Thurman in his book, “The Luminous Darkness” paints an obscure portrait that delved deep into the consciousness of Black men, women and children freshly freed from chattel slavery. Two hundred years of slavery and one hundred years of darkness seeping into each soul perpetuated by an evil explained only through the Word of God. Although this book was published in the 60’s, the stigma segregation continues resonate in the souls of those who remember and perhaps even in the souls of those who do not.

The interplay of dark and light motifs underlies the narrator’s most recent hardship. On his way home on the subway, the narrator comes across his brother’s name in a newspaper and “stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside” (Baldwin). Riding in the light of the subway car, the author makes the non-suspecting narrator subject to suffering, unguarded by the protective cloak of the outside darkness. Made vulnerable by the exposed light and people surrounding him, the narrator is hit harder by the unexpected news than if he had read it in the darkness of his private room. Under the “swinging lights,” the narrator is not prepared to cope with the troubling news. This emphasizes the importance of light as a symbol for one’s need of camouflage to properly cope with tragedy.

All the light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, chronicles the lives and relationship between Marie and Werner, two children who grew up in France and Germany. The society around them forces discriminatory ideals that cloud their perception of the world, but they find its meaning through their own self-definition. In this, they are both guided by a single radio and the message and legacy that it contains. Throughout the book, the author isolated the two characters, but also created subtle connections between the two. The most important of which would be the radio. It created a bond between the two where they learned from each other’s experiences and struggles. All the Light We Cannot See recreates a new picture of the world by contrasting the two separate journeys taken by Marie- Laure LeBlanc and Werner Pfennig to gain that image, which is guided by the power of a radio and the message it contains, ultimately leading to the meeting of the two characters that officially forms an image of the world where one’s actions are valued more than one’s physical features.

A Comparison Between “Traveling through the dark” and “A Noiseless, Patient Spider”      William Stafford’s "Traveling through the dark" is beautifully written poem that expresses one of life’s most challenging aspects. It is the story of a man’s solitary struggle to deal with a tragic event that he encounters.

Traveling Through the Dark by William Stafford 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

Ambrose Bierce was known as the “mist of light”. His stories were usually centered on civil war. It was usually a horror or supernatural story, but it could be a comic or tall-tale as well. Bierce’s “Chickamauga” is nothing short of a horror story. This story is known as one of the most powerful anti-war stories, and fits in with the literary criticism New Historicism. It is about a young boy around the age of 6 years, whose father had fought in the Civil War. We later find out that the young boy is deaf and mute. This, and him being only 6 years of age, causes him to be naïve about the things he sees in the forest one day when he gets lost.

In the article, "Talking a stranger through the night" written by, Sherry Amatenstein, writes about her experience being a holocaust survivor that influences her to work for the help line services which, requires her to answer phone calls from people encountering depression along with suicide thoughts. Although she received harassment calls, she also got a call from a woman contemplating suicide that was able to get help from Sherry. Her listening to the woman's life story made the woman feel better as if she was okay to go on her way. In result of helping that woman, Sherry realizes that she loves her job and continues to help souls in need.

Profound Meaning in William Stafford's Traveling Through the Dark The power of the poet is not only to convey an everyday scene into a literary portrait of words, but also to interweave this scene into an underlying theme. The only tool the poet has to wield is the word. Through a careful placement and selection of words, the poet can hopefully make his point clear, but not blatantly obvious. Common themes of poems are life, death, or the conflicting forces thereto. This theme could never possibly be overused because of the endless and limitless ways of portraying life or death through the use of different words.

Stafford wrote the poem” Traveling Through the Dark”, which is a short poem (first person) that talks about a man that is driving on a road and he came across a deer that was blocking a road. The man hopped out of his car to move the deer when he noticed that it had been pregnant with a baby fawn. Not only was the deer pregnant, but the fawn was still living. The poet writes “her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting, alive, still, never to be born” (Stafford 10-11). Before pushing the deer off of a cliff into a