Summary of ‘Traveling Through the Dark’
William Stafford
‘Traveling Through the Dark’ is a poem by William Stafford well known for its narrative and the
emotionally difficult situation in which the narrator discovers himself that readers easily could overlook
the work’s technical excellence. It presents a great tension between the two realities, two system of life.
On one hand are efficiency and responsibility, unglamorous virtues that we learn to admire when we face
danger or loss. On the other hand, there are emotions warmer than efficiency and much deeper than good
judgment.
Literal Interpretation:
While travelling through the dark, the narrator finds a dead deer on the edge of the Wilson river road. He
very clearly rationalizes that the best way is to push it into the river as the road is narrow, it may cause
more accident. With the help of the light of the tail-light of the car, he reached the heap and found that it
was a recent killing of the doe. She was already stiffened so he started dragging her off. But he found that
she was pregnant and the fawn was there still and alive waiting to be born. He was suddenly stopped in
his physical action and the mental action began. When he touched the side he came up with a reason. He
stood there thinking about the baby. The engine inside the car was making a purr sound. He was turned
red in the glare of the warm exhaust. He couldn’t decide what to do at the moment. He felt it very hard to
bring out any good judgment. Meanwhile, he pushed her in the river. Eventually he did what he said in
the beginning. He thought it the only alternative finally stood in front of him.
Critical Interpretation:
The poem carefully combines more formal elements with the relaxed diction of free verse. The lines
involve variations of rhythm like the iambic pentameter. Stafford also flirts with rhyme by employing
near rhymes, half rhymes, and off rhymes, particularly relying on assonance or consonance: “road” and
“dead”; “killing” and “belly”; “waiting” and “hesitated”; “engine” and listen”; “swerving” and “river.”
The partial and imperfect rhymes hide the poem’s deliberate construction enough that the language does
not appear forced or artificial, with the narrative sounding frank and unfiltered. With its four quatrains and
closing couplet, the poem even seems to feel like a camouflaged form, one that resembles an extended
sonnet and reads like one.
Throughout the poem, Stafford embeds internal rhymes or echoing sounds as well, subtly delivering an
underlying lyricism that does not call too much attention to itself; instead, the words almost come across
as delivered in natural speech. The speaker’s informality seems as intimate as an admission confided to a
friend or family member. In fact, Stafford has reported the initiation of this poem began as he related the
story to one of his children the morning after he’d returned from teaching late one night, having
experienced the event dramatized in the poem’s lines.
Many have observed the ways William Stafford bridges conflicting worlds in his poem: the human and
nature, civilization and the wilderness, technology and the environment, emotion and reason, the physical
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and the mystical, life and death. As a number of other poets have done, Stafford conveys the clash that
occurs when one state intrudes on the other, crosses unmarked borders, and delight drifts into disaster.
Beginning the poem, the speaker at first chronicles a moment of discovery with an opening line that
would appear positive if isolated: “Traveling through the dark I found a deer . . .” In fact, Stafford
organizes his lines and words so carefully that he directs the reader through the experience both spatially
and spiritually, as he evokes and lifts levels of emotion. The order in which he reveals his finding is also
remarkable: “the heap, a doe, a recent killing.” The speaker brings his reader closer while also gradually
unveiling disturbing specificity. The speaker continually moves from darkness to light, from ignorance to
comprehension. He repeats the technique later when he touches the deer: “her side was warm; her fawn
lay there waiting, / alive, still, never to be born.” The process moves from life to death, from an awareness
of the situation to an understanding of the consequences. (The various options for interpreting the word
still: quiet, motionless, inanimate, stillborn, even now, yet, nevertheless, in spite of that, etc.) Indeed, at
one point physical contact also causes a shift from the emotional to the rational: “My fingers touching her
side brought me the reason.”
The need to make a decision in this situation confronted by the speaker leaves no pleasant choice. His
options are as narrow as the road he travels in that mysterious and dark night. In the first stanza, he
already acknowledges he must clear the route, “to swerve might make more dead.” However, by the final
lines in the closing couplet, he returns to words originally mentioned in that opening stanza, and to his
pattern of contemplation: “I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—, / then pushed her over the edge
into the river.” Ironically, as many might suggest, in literature a river often symbolizes life, but also the
inevitable passing of time that does not hesitate for anyone.
One could question the reference to “us all,” and wonder whether Stafford has the right to include
everyone in his thinking. On the other hand, the speaker could only be referring to the group present at the
scene: the deer, the fawn, the animated automobile whose engine “purred” as the speaker ironically gives
life to this object along with the “wilderness” that is listening, the traveler himself, and even the reader
now in attendance. In either case, Stafford creates a dramatic moment, a pause for reflection before he
acts, as he knows he must.
Stafford’s imagery creates ambiguity and blurs distinctions between participants. When he writes, “I
stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red,” the syntax implies almost equally that the exhaust
was turning red but so was the speaker, and some of the emotions traditionally associated through
symbolism or connotations linked to the color red (blood, embarrassment, anger, aggression, conflict,
violence, sacrifice, war, a warning of danger, etc.) may be evoked and loosely tied to the speaker’s state
of mind.
To sum up, the poem reveals many darkness such as physical darkness, moral darkness, emotional and
reasoning darkness through the beautifully interweaved words into narrative and stative stanzas by both
mental and physical actions.
The Heritage of the Words
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