William Stafford's Poem 'Traveling Through The Dark'

How much deer could a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck were driving down the road and came across a dead, pregnant doe? Well, the woodchuck chucking the dear is a bit irrelevant. Rather, the two poems Traveling through the Dark by William Stafford and Woodchucks by Maxine Kumin respectively focus on the relationship between humans and nature. Woodchucks takes an allegorical approach, with a heavy handed political message. Traveling simply examines the significance of human life in the context of nature. If the poems were literary characters, Traveling would be Jane Eyre, Woodchucks would be Brutus. Traveling is personal, with the narrator having a strong sense of humanity, but ultimately basing his actions on logic.

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

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

In the paragraph, “The Deer of Providencia”, by Annie Dillard, it tells her experience about her eating a captured deer in Providencia, the capital of Ecuador, and transitions to the article about Alan McDonald, a burn victim, and transitions back to Dillard feeling sorry for the deer before she leaves. The message Dillard is trying to send to us is that there is suffering in this world, and we can not escape or deny that fact. One of the most blatant examples is the suffering of the deer. Most of the essay is about the deer, how the deer struggled, eating it, and the last thoughts are about the deer. Readers get a very explicit description about how the deer was tied up, and how no matter what it did, it would get stuck.

A poem can paint a thousand images in one’s mind. The poem, Acquainted with the Night, presents a graphic picture of a lonely, depressed man, who is possibly an insomniac, walking the streets on a sad, rainy night .This poem shows the different emotions that the author goes through in order to cope with heartbreak. The poem is aimed at the world in general, and the themes of depression, loneliness, and sadness prevails across the entire poem. The poem follows the format with 3-line stanzas and a scheme of rhyming aba bcb cdc dad aa. This poem proves that the author is going through turmoil within himself and is struggling as the love of his life has moved on with no trace like a thief in the night. The author starts the Poem off as follows;

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 “Traveling through the Dark” by William Stafford and “Woodchucks” Maxine Kumin, man vs. natural death situations are present. Both poems share some similarities and differences. In “Traveling through the Dark”, the speaker is compassionate and considerate towards the dead deer and whose main goal is to get it off the road to prevent future deaths. However, in “Woodchucks” the speaker shows violence in killing the woodchuck, to the point of killing the whole bird family. In both poems by William Stafford and Maxine Kumin, the poets each emphasize different attitudes toward animals; Stafford showing compassion while Kumin shows vengeance, through the use of vivid imagery, explicit diction, and metaphors.

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.

Wouldn’t it be best for a responsible driver to dispose of roadkill on a dangerous road rather than swerve and endanger your life and the lives of other ignorant drivers? You might say “of course!” and it seems to be an easy decision to make. However, in William Stafford’s poem “Traveling through the dark” the speaker finds this decision very difficult. The speaker stops and finds a dead and pregnant doe.

For instance, the two roads which are diverging into the woods are symbolic of choices in life. The term ‘yellow woods’, is symbolic of autumn season and nature’s readiness to accept a new season. The speaker’s initial indecisiveness is symbolic of human nature, not to take apt decision at critical situations. Both the roads are similar and this is symbolic of the difficulty faced by human beings in life. The grass, morning, etc are symbolic of early stages in human life, in which decision making is so important. Besides, the morning is symbolic of new beginning in life or the chance to take an apt decision in life. So, the setting is symbolic because it represents human life and the importance of free will in life.

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.

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.