William Stafford's Traveling Through The Dark

Now days, it is hard to connect or be with the nature, especially if you live in a city. While there are people that interact with the nature every day because of their rural location. The short poem “Traveling through the Dark” by William Stafford, is about a person that encounter a dead deer in the road in the middle of the night. In the story, the narrator have to decide if he would save the unborn deer or just throw the mom deer to the river to save other people that might suffer an accident by encountering the dead body. In the poem, is interesting to see how the narrator, which represent the human world, makes a connection with the natural world by encountering the deer and debating if he/she should do something for the baby deer. Interestingly enough, Stafford give a clear description of the setting, location and time where this is occurring when he mentions, “Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge
574). From this line is easy to identify that is at night time, in a road with a river on the side and that the narrator is aware of the risk other people can encounter if the dead body is left in the road. In addition to all the information given by Stafford, he also put in motion the connection between the human worlds, meaning the person who found the deer, and the natural world which is the deer. The similarity between the nature and the human world in the poem is the pregnancy of the deer, which is something humans have in their life. Which is when Stafford mentions, “My fingers touching her side brought me the reason – her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting, alive, still never to be born” (574). Also, a story of what happen to the deer can be perceived when Stafford mentions, “By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing” (p. 574). Clearly a car, most likely, killed the