Chapter - 7

Traveling Through the Dark

William Stafford

Summary of the poem

This poem is about a man, who finds a dead deer on the road while he is drinking at night. When he stops to move it, he discovers that it is a doe and pregnant. He hesitates and thinks whether to save the unborn fawn. Eventually, he pushes the dead doe off the road, into the river.

The poem is about making decisions. The poet considers different possible sources of action-his mind “serves” (changes). The poet is serving between the easy course of action and the more difficult but better course of action. Pushing the doe into the river is the easy course of action. Whereas trying to save the unborn fawn is more difficult. He chooses the easy course. When someone has a problem, they often think about different possible answers and serve from one idea to the other before they finally decide.

The central idea of the poem is that what a man does knowingly or unknowingly latter he suffers from its result. A human being is responsible to make the environment either clean or polluted. If we divide the poem into three parts in terms of its action, there are three different activities. The first part has physical activity, the second part has mental activity and in the third part, the speaker makes a rational decision.

The title of the poem may have two explanations. Literally, those who travel through the dark are the people who are traveling at night having numerous purposes. The speaker is driving a car through, the heights and along a road at a mountain site. They are all nature lovers and naturalists who are traveling through the dark. The explanations indicate those people who are insensitive and unmindful to nature. They are ignorant people. They don’t know that nature and the natural world is a gift and we can’t sustain human life in a healthy manner. In the absence of the natural world.

To push the dead doe into the river, although there is a living fawn inside the body of it. It is the poet’s wise decisions because instead of worrying about the problems, one has to accept the things as they are. The poet satires those people who are responsible for environmental damage.