“Traveling Through the Dark”: Deep Meanings Within Simple Words
For everyone with cognitive thought, choices are a part of everyday life, even when they are difficult to make. A choice could be deciding what to order on a menu, or it could be a decision that could be life-changing. The poem “Traveling Through the Dark” by William Stafford catches the reader’s attention with a choice the narrator must make while traveling on the road less traveled. This poem illustrates the internal conflict people face when it comes to choosing between what is right and what is easy, and it brings to life the constant battle between technology and nature. William Stafford was born and raised in Hutchinson, Kansas and he had a burning passion for hunting and fishing. According to Frank Madden, “William Stafford earned a Ph.D. from Iowa State University, and for many years taught at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon” (Madden 1164). Safford also wrote a tremendous amount, journaling many of his daily experiences. His first major collection of poems was published when he was forty-eight years old and later received the National Book Award in 1963. “Traveling Through the Dark” is one of Stafford’s most well-known poems because it, like many of his poems, tells an easily comprehensible story with underlying currents of greater meaning. In the first stanza of “Traveling Through the Dark” the narrator encounters a dead doe while driving through an inky night on a mountainous