Megan Bennett
Ms. McGee
English 3B
17 April 2012
Comparing and Contrasting
“Traveling through the Dark” and “Woodchucks” are each poems that describe the
relationship between humanity and nature, although in very different ways. Each author’s
utilization of resources of language, such as relationships between humanity and nature, diction,
and the narrator’s tone have created several distinctions between each poem.
“Traveling through the Dark” describes a scene where the presence of modern humanity
has a deeply negative effect on nature. Stafford’s tone when describing the scene of the dead doe
lying on the side of the road with her unborn, living and breathing fawn evokes feelings of
ignorance, shame, and hopelessness. All this signifies man’s carelessness toward the natural
world. Humanity now overlooks nature’s innocence and has now taken her beauty for granted.
The poem also hides an intricate message about man and nature behind the phrasing and syntax.
Very simple word choices in the poem are extremely important. The simple and blunt words help
the everyday casual reader see past the conversational style and into the more metaphorical and
unspoken meanings of what seem like blunt word and image picks. The passage is almost scared
to use strong words as the author seems to “beat around the bush” when he could just say it in a
more straight forward way. For instance, instead of saying the deer was pregnant, he says, “I
dragged her off, she was large in the belly.” Instead, the narrator puts it in a way we can accept.
It would be too difficult for us humans to suggest she was pregnant, despite the fact humans are
the problem. He cannot come out and discuss the impact of a car, what we would otherwise say
in general is technology, on the natural world, but skirts around it and indicates the deer as
something completely different from the man-made features surrounding her.
Alternatively in the poem “Woodchucks” we see nature being an annoyance to the
modern world. For some reason the narrator wishes to inflict harm on the woodchucks. The
attitude towards nature in this scene could be described as ungrateful and ignorant. Humans are
often quick to harm Mother Nature even though it has done nothing wrong. This sense of
unnecessary cruelty towards the innocent is also seen in the not so subtle references to the
Holocaust. In the poem the woodchucks symbolize Jews that were part of the Holocaust in
World War two. The Nazis put the guiltless through torture, executing and brutally murdering
countless people. The Nazi’s attitude is similar to the attitude of the narrator’s. The word choice
in “Woodchucks” is slightly more detailed. The reason being the poem is more symbolic and
requires the use of imagery to understand the underlying meaning. The author goes all out in
attempts to describe the brutality the narrator inflicted on the woodchucks, more specifically the
effect the Nazis made on the Jews. Also noteworthy, the rhyming pattern. It is very subtle,
ABCACB, yet it makes the poem flow beautifully; despite it isn’t a singsong tune.
Each poem has a violent, grim, painful and guilty tone to it, maybe some more or less in
others. While reading “Traveling through the Dark” The doe’s death and the inescapable fate of
her baby fawn brings on a feeling of guilt, more so that the poem of the “Woodchucks”. Also in
contrast the “Woodchuck” poem emphasizes on violence more than its partner. Throughout the
story the narrator is blood thirsty and cares only about the death of the woodchucks. Starting off
at what the writer calls a “merciful” death until the bloody, gory deaths in the end. While each
poem has their differences they both have a grim and gloomy tone. The death of each animal
leaves the reader feeling sad and hopeless.
The author’s choices of relationships between nature and humanity, word choice, and the
narrator’s tone in each of the poems, are all factors making each poem unique. Without the use
and execution of these elements the poems would have not given the author’s intended effect.