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.
In William Stafford's "Traveling Through the Dark", there are conflicting themes between birth and death, man and
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In the second stanza, Stafford's diction conjures a graphic image of the carcass with words like "stiffened", "cold" and referring to the carcass as a "heap". The language itself conveys the carcass as though it had never lived before, but instead, always remained dead.
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.
The third stanza introduces the fawn within the doe, a sharp contrast between the scene of darkness and death with life and birth. However, this concept of birth and life is nothing to be celebrated, for Stafford reveals this discovery in a negative tone:
My fingers touching her side brought me the reason -
her side was warm, her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road, I hesitated.
With the living fawn waiting for a birth that would never come, the reader cannot help but feel sympathy
Poems consist of a variation of different techniques in order to convey a message or idea to readers. Wilfred Owen, Thomas Hardy, Adrienne Rich, Bruce Dawe and Robert Browning are great poets who explore these issues, conveying their emotions, which influences a perception of an issue. In each of their poems they express the hidden message of hope, along with their main message. They use similar techniques to express their ideas, which illustrates their purpose to the reader.
In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives.
The theme of fatalism in the poem is so strong that it is evident that fate was a strong force in the lives of the people of this
Overall, Harper does a brilliant job in describing the emotions of a parent who loses a child. The hope that their child will be okay in the hands of doctors and the despair when they find out that modern medicine has failed them. Also, the regret that a parent feels after losing a child. Even though Harper does play with the emotional curve of an elegy by not having solace at the end, it can be argued that he is able to entirely capture the emotion of a parent because many parents do not come to accept their child’s
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
David Huddle develops the theme of the understanding of life in his poem, Roanoke Pastorale, by using a optimistic tone to create the despair mood. In the poem, the author is singing along the birds in the great blizzard while thinking of his old days along with the death. The quote, “my later’s my soon,” (11) is used to reflect his impending death. In addition, the repetition of the word, ‘turkey buzzard’ throughout the poem depicts the end of life. Although, death may sounds scary, the author mentions it in a positive tone. For instance, aside from the turkey buzzard mentioned in the poem, others kind of birds have their meaning in positive way. Along with the action mentioned in the poem, “for your entertainment, I sing the words of old
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.
With this use of the first-person viewpoint, both poets depict what the speakers see, hear, feel, and their internal thoughts. Therefore, the audience can have a clearer picture of the speakers’ intentions and better understand the poems. Beside the similarity that both poems share, several differences can also be noted. In “Traveling through the Dark,” the poet depicts a vivid image by appealing to the senses of sight, hearing, and touch; however, the writer of “Woodchucks” portrays a more gruesome image to show the death of the animals. In order to appeal to sight, Stafford first describes the dead doe to convey a scary and sympathetic atmosphere to the audience (I. 1).
He explains that their love is so strong that it will survive the distance. One example he uses to compare being away from each other is death in the literal sense. The main theme of this poem was the love between husband and wife, with a metaphorical theme to death. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” contains both themes, their roles are reversed. Death is the main theme continuing throughout the poem and is personified.
In life, people are always faced with choices to make. Whether it is what restaurant to eat at, or what movie to watch, life is full of decisions. In the poem “Traveling Through the Dark,” William Stafford describes how the speaker is faced with a decision between life and death. Throughout the poem, the speaker constantly goes back and forth between killing an unborn fawn on the side of a road or allowing the fawn’s life to continue, putting human lives in danger. Stafford uses many literary devices to show the relationship between humanity and nature and how they affect each other.
if the speaker got someone to give the dead doe a C-section, how would the unborn fawn live the rest of it's The fawn would be not be able to eat, how would it survive harsh weathers.Eventually one day it would get attacked and used as prey.According to State Farm,on average An estimated 1.23 million deer-vehicle collisions occurred in the U.S. between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012, costing more than $4 billion in vehicle damage.In William Stafford's poem “Traveling Through the Dark,” the speaker decided to remove a dead pregnant doe from the road to prevent future fatalities. This was not an easy decision for the speaker to make, however he did what was right
The poem “Travelling through the Dark” by WIlliam Stafford, shows a tragic theme. The person finds dead deer beside the road and pushes them over the canyon. This way the deer might not get hit by a car and become “more dead.” The person is doing a good thing by clearing the roads and making sure the deers corpse doesn’t get even more damaged. Then one time the person finds a recent killing, yet there’s something special about the doe.
The vivid imagery used in this poem helps convey the strong image within. In the second stanza, “Because their words had forked no lightning they/ Do not go gentle into that good light./”(5-6) their words had no impact on the world, and they will not go into death gently, as they want to make an impact before they leave their earthly domain. Another example of imagery throughout the poem is in the final stanza. In line 16, the poet implements his own father, “And you, my father, there on the sad height, /” (16) his father is on the verge of death.
In the poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, by Emily Dickinson and “Home Burial”, by Robert Frost, literary elements are used throughout both poems to get the message the authors are trying to portray. One main important literary element that is used to entice the reader, is symbolism, because it helps the authors describe something without actual describing it. Symbolism is also used because it shows how significant an object is. Characterization is also an important literary technique because it, gives the reader an idea on how the character would act, work, and their values in life. Death is a topic that is used in both poems. Also, every character express their opinion about death differently.
Poems are like snowflakes. While no two are the same, they all have common structures and themes. One prevalent theme in poetry is that of death, which is present in both “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. Dickinson perceives death as a gentleman, while Frost perceives death as loneliness, which provides insight on how the time periods of the poems, the genders of the authors, and the authors’ personal experiences influence literature.