Traveling Through the Dark

The two poems “Traveling Through the Dark” by William Stafford and “Keep the Headlights On” by Conor Shenk both touch upon the idea that saving one life may lead to other deaths. Both poems are talking about a dead pregnant deer with her fawn still alive inside of her and how some people would handle that situation. Both authors do a good job in making the audience feel an almost sympathy for the unborn fawn. “Traveling Through the Dark” by William Stafford talks about saving the lives of humans by pushing the dead deer off the cliff, but would then lead to the death of the unborn fawn. “Keep the Headlights On” by Conor Shenk talks about how one would approach to save the unborn fawn, but put his own and maybe other’s lives in danger. The first poem, “Traveling Through the Dark” by William Stafford, would be considered the starting point of idea of the two different poems. That means that this poem was written first and the other one was written in respond to the first one. In the first poem William Stafford talks about driving on a dark narrow road and coming across a deer blocking his path. He thinks about the danger this deer can cause to other drivers who might not see it in the road and decided to push the deer of the cliff into the water below. To his surprise when he got to it the deer it had a live unborn fawn inside of its stomach. Now this made him think, He was going to get rid of the danger this deer may cause to other humans, but also kill the life of an unborn fawn at the same time. After thinking he finally decides that the best case scenario was to push the deer off the edge of the cliff. This man had sympathy towards taking the life of an unborn deer, but knew it was the best option at the time. Finding out that this deer had an unborn life inside of it, made the man second guess himself because he understands the importance of life; human or animal. When thinking of the scenario this man was put into it is hard to think that he had any