By William Stafford
‘Traveling through the Dark’ by William Stafford dramatizes the mental conflict between duty and emotion. In the life of human beings, there comes many situations in which they can’t decide what to do and what not to do. This human dilemma is well projected by the poet. In the poem, the speaker experiences the same mental conflict because he is unable to decide whether to push the deer out of the road or not. His duty urges him to push the dead deer out of the road but his emotion doesn’t let him do so. The poem begins with the speaker’s mental conflict and ends with the resolution of the mental conflict along with the victory of duty over emotion and offering a moral lesson to the readers to prioritize duty over emotion.
The speaker is driving his car along the Wilson River Road at night. Suddenly, he sees a dead deer lying on the road. No sooner, he sees the deer, he thinks of pushing it into the canyon because the road is narrow and the presence of the dead deer on the road is likely to cause more accidents. With this intention, he gets off the car, goes near the deer, and discovers it to be a dead doe. The words ‘cold’ and ‘stiffened’ imply the doe to be dead. As he observes carefully, he notices the doe is large in the belly which suggests the pregnancy of the doe.
As the speaker touches the belly of the doe, he feels it to be warm which makes him realize that the fawn inside the belly is still alive. A realization of the alive fawn awakens his sympathy for that unborn fawn. Now the speaker is trapped between duty and emotion. This is to say, his duty urges him to push the deer and resume his journey but his emotion does not let him do so. He is not in a position to decide what to do and what not to do. Therefore, he hesitates in the mountain road while observing the dead doe.
The first, second, and third stanza of the poem deals with the physical action of the speaker but after realizing the fawn to be alive, begins the mental action. The fourth stanza of the poem highlights the speaker’s mental conflict between his duty and emotion. Standing in the light of the car, he just thinks which one to accept and which one to reject. Finally, the conflict is resolved in the last two lines of the poem.
The last two lines of the poem are important for so many things. They include both physical and mental action in the sense that the speaker after thinking a lot, pushes the deer into the river. The last two lines resolve the mental conflict by showing the victory of duty over emotion. The ending of the poem offers a moral lesson for readers to follow their duty rather than their emotion because a dutiful man makes his life beautiful.
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