The analogy of life, along with the obstacles that one must overcome in order to advance and to succeed is portrayed through the narrator’s experience with a dead deer in “Traveling through the Dark” by William Stafford. An interpretation of the title “Traveling through the Dark” is one’s outlook of life. Ultimately, humans are incapable of being all-knowing; living day by day without the ability to predict tomorrow. The dead deer on the edge of the road symbolizes unexpectancies in life, the speaker 's ability to make a critical decision when no one is watching allows the speaker to progress in the journey of life. Initially, Stafford makes it appear that the speaker has had prior experiences of stumbling across dead animals on the road. The speaker continues, “It is usually best to roll them into the canyon,” revealing that the speaker is knowledgeable of the situation. Referring back to past encounters, one is capable of making quicker decisions when approaching familiar situation or problems in life. Calm and collected, the speaker decides to take responsibility to pathe the way of the road and remove the deer. In the next line, the speaker explains that to “swerve might make more dead.” Swerving is a representation of avoiding the situation, which may end up killing the speaker or cause more accidents to unsuspecting drivers that may take the same road as the speaker. Instead of addressing the challenge that one may come across in life, the problem may grow out of