"Traveling Through the Dark" by William Stafford was published in 1962. This poem has no consistent line length; there is also no specific rhyme scheme. One characteristic I found in this poem is the similarity between some of the words. Some of the words have the same sounds such as lines five and seven: "By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car.../she had stiffened already, almost cold" (Stafford 155), the words "car" and "cold" both have the C sound. I have found the same similarity between sounds in other lines also.
"Traveling Through the Dark" is about a man's hesitation to give life to a fawn. This man swerves on the road when he spots a dead deer that is basically lying in the middle of the road. The man gets out
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The speaker is confused on whether he should save the fawn or not, but saving the fawn would mean he would have to open the doe right then and there, but what would he do next? The speaker's tone is confused.
The speaker wants the wilderness to give him a sign about what he should do; here he is personifying the wilderness as a living entity. The wilderness does not give the speaker a sign, and here he finds himself in the dark, literally he is in the dark because it is night time, but metaphorically he is in the darkness of uncertainty between knowing what the right choice is and what the wrong choice is. If he saves the fawn, the fawn will never have the chance to be what it is really supposed to be. Instead of being brought up in the wilderness, it will be brought up as a pet. The speaker knows that animals need freedom and if you are born free than you take the risk of dying, that is what happened to the doe.
When the speaker says "Beside that mountain road I hesitated", the poem turns, and the audience starts to hesitate along with the reader. We hesitate because the poem gives some symbolic meanings that make us think. Someone's "predatory" car has killed this doe, and then the speaker talks about the description of the car, the audience starts to see images: "The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights; / under the hood purred the steady
Not only are metaphors utilized throughout the poem, but a literary device known as Imagery is as well. Imagery is alternative as important a device for it allows for the reader to have a clear picture of what the character in the poem is visualizing. Furthermore, it also helps covey the theme the author is aiming to represent to the reader. Imagery is made known in stanza two line three, which states, “Because it was grassy and wanted wear” (Myer, 1091). Here the author is using imagery to inform the readers the traveler is coming up with a reason for why one path could be more favorable over the other. The reader analyzes this line of imagery to obtain a clearer representation of the traveler’s decision-making process. Another line where the author uses imagery is in stanza two line five, which states, “Had worn them really about the same” (Myer, 1091). Here the author is using imagery to inform the reader that the paths are “worn” down, which informs the reader that both of his choices have been equally chosen by people before him. These examples help the reader begin to form the theme of self-justification in decision-making. After analyzing the metaphors and the imagery Frost uses in this poem, the reader can conclude so far that the theme the poet is conveying
As evident by the title of this poem, imagery is a strong technique used in this poem as the author describes with great detail his journey through a sawmill town. This technique is used most in the following phrases: “...down a tilting road, into a distant valley.” And “The sawmill towns, bare hamlets built of boards with perhaps a store”. This has the effect of creating an image in the reader’s mind and making the poem even more real.
In Woodchucks, the animals are simply used as an allegorical device to further the idea that humans are quick to be injure and kill the weak for minute reasons. Traveling, however, focuses on the relationship between nature and humans, and the price of saving humans’ lives. The speaker in Woodchucks is not driven by the greater good for humanity, but is driven by the “Darwinian pieties for killing”. The speaker in Traveling acts because animals in the road “might make more dead”. He hesitates because he understands the importance of the unborn fawn’s life, but the Woodchucks speaker doesn’t hesitate to shoot the youngest woodchuck “down in the everbearing roses”. However, the Woodchucks speaker villainizes himself for killing the innocent, whereas Traveling simply reiterates how the speaker “thought hard for us all”, causing both themes to be respectively
In William Stafford 's poem “Traveling through the Dark” he establishes how a gloomy sight can hide the truth that no one would want to know. While driving down Wilson River road a person saw a dead deer on the edge. He pull over to take the deer of the road more a notices that it is a doe and it’s pregant. He feels the stomach and the baby is alive but not for long. He hesitates when he looks at his car and hears it and the wilderness. He eventually pushes the deer over the edge of the river. In the exposition, the poem tells that while driving down the road he saw a deer and most people would either severe it to past it or
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
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 the next four lines, the speaker goes on to express the isolation of the woods and on the winter solstice, or “the darkest evening of the year”. The speaker lays the responsibility of saying that it is strange to be her on his little horse who “must think it queer”. The speaker is in isolation in the growing dark, yet he stops and stays in the lonely woods. The line, “between the woods and frozen lake” gives a sense of being trapped and having no escape. He is ensnared between the ever growing foreboding of the woods and an icy expanse that could prove deadly. Also, throughout history, the winter solstice has been a night of superstitions, of fear and loathing. It seems strange that with all of this, the man still desires to be alone in a dark wood when he has a long way to travel yet before he gets home. In a way, the speaker is intentionally isolating himself from society.
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.
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is a very well know poem by Robert Frost. The poem appears to be very simple, but it has a hidden meaning to it. The simple words and rhyme scheme of the poem gives it an easy flow, which adds to the calmness of the poem. The rhyme scheme (aaba, bbcb, ccdc, dddd) and the rhythm (iambic tetrameter) give the poem a solid structure. The poem is about the speaker’s experience of stopping by the dark woods in the winter evening with his horse and admiring the beauty of the fresh fallen snow in the forest. Then, the speaker projects himself into the mind of his horse, speculating about his horse’s practical concerns and the horse
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 .
Fly By Night International was founded by Douglas C. Mather in the mid 1970's. He started the company as a pilot training school. Then he branched out into government contracting. He used his “rent-an-enemy” fleet to the Navy and Air Force for use in fighter-pilot training. The company experienced great success during the first five years of its operations and the stock price almost doubled. However, in year 14 the company started a rapid descent. The company did not have enough cash flow to service its debt. Furthermore, the company found material misstatements in their financial statements. After analyzing the financial statements of the company it has become clear the causes of the cash flow problems.
Like “The Road Not Taken”, in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, the speaker has to make a big decision in his life. He has to choose between isolation and social obligation. At first glance, this poem might denote stopping in the woods to escape the hustle and bustle of city life. Different symbols in this poem though reveal that stop in the poem could be referring to death. In this phrase “Between the woods and frozen lake”, the wood becomes a symbol of life where frozen lake signifies death. When the speaker reaches the woods, he finds a world offering perfect, quiet and solitude, existing side by side with the realization that there is also another world, a world of people and social obligation. Both
this in order that she would drop me off at the pub. I was keen to get
Driving down a narrow mountain road, "traveling through the dark," the narrator of the poem encounters a deer. The deer is actually "dead on the edge of the Wilson River road." The traveler decides to send the deer over the edge of the canyon, because "to swerve might make more dead." This line indicates that if he fails or "swerves" in his decision, the deer could cause an accident on the narrow road that might cost more lives.