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Rhyan Healey
Jackie Burr, Instructor
English 1010, Section 7
6 January, 2017
The Entitled Ideologies and Subsequent Consequences of Human Consciousness
In William E. Staffords Traveling through the Dark
Within the free verse poem that is Traveling through the dark William Stafford
juxtaposes human compassion with human rationality, with the ramifications that follow suit.
Stafford uses a variety of figurative language to convey his perspective, as well as transitioning
from a physical viewpoint at the beginning of the poem to a heavier moral standing at the
conclusion. The structure of the poem and his wording indicate an informal tone, him speaking
directly to the audience rather than narrating as a character or in a more formal style. It has a
casual voice as well, almost as inner-thinking or a conversation with a close friend.
The entire four quatrains and ending couplet serve as an extended metaphor, a trope
describing his alternating opinions until the very end. Each stanza, from beginning to end,
progresses to convey his state of mind. The meter of the poem resembles an elegy, with Stafford
entertaining the idea of human carelessness regarding other life forms lives. The imagery is this
poem is eloquent, and lets the reader imagine a world of their own, bringing the reader even
closer to the man standing over the limp deer, giving the reader a chance to develop their own
assessment on the ethicality and morality of the situation.
In the first quatrain, the title is hinting at something a little more inconspicuous, with
traveling lending an ambiguous play on words. Many things can be hidden in the dark, like the
sinister idea of mans arrogance over life and death of lesser beings and also the darkness over

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compassion and rationality. The narrow road can resemble the elite power that humanity holds
over the rest of the worlds inhabitants, which could be said as to why the deer ended the way she
did. Stafford shows a rational side in this quatrain, holding little room for sympathy at this time,
shoving the deer off the road for the safety of others traveling on this road. The next quatrain
shows the contrasting transition of his thinking, feeling the warm belly coupled with the cold,
stiff doe. The line a recent killing foreshadows the thought process and metaphors in the next
stanza of human machines, like cars, becoming hunters of unsuspecting prey (line 6).
Staffords use of figurative language represents the most fiercely in the fourth stanza,
with his heavy use of metaphors. Throughout the quatrain, he compares the car, the engine, and
the exhaust to that of a beast, with the red-tinted exhaust resembling the spilt blood of an animal.
The headlights on the car and the steady purr of the engine exemplify beams of vision,
almost to seek out creatures to become victim to the cold killer that is an automobile. He lends a
strong sensory device in the phrase around our group I could hear the wilderness listen,
speaking almost as a warning to other creatures in the wilderness around him of the dangers if
they get too close to humanity (line 16).
The couplet at the end ends abruptly, alluding to the abrupt way the life of the doe and
potentially the fawn was taken away. His only swerving regards whether or not to try to save the
fawn and expose it to the dangers of the human world, or to save the pain in the first place and
push the mother and the fawn into the river. In these last two lines, you see a change of
character, a character evolution crucial to the storyline of the poem, where he comes face to face
with the fact that the most compassionate thing to do is the most rational as well.