Traveling Through The Dark Poem Analysis

In the poem, “Traveling Through the Dark”, the author, William Stafford, uses many poetic devices that enhance the true meaning of the poem. The poetic devices found in the poem include poem’s persona, tone, word choice, imagery, symbolism, and comparisons. Stafford uses these poetic devices to help the readers to experience and visualize the situation that the narrator is going through. To understand a poem you have to know the setting, the poem’s persona, the tone, the kind of situation that is occurring throughout the poem, and you have to know the clear message of the poem, if there is one. In “Traveling Through the Dark” these five key details are presented to the readers. The poem’s persona is the narrator himself. The narrator is

Stafford uses these poetic devices in the poem plentiful times. One example of symbolism is the fawn of the dead doe. The fawn is the baby of the deer, but it also symbolizes nature and how it is getting dominated over technology. The car, which is a symbol of technology, is shown with some sort of supremacy with its ‘purring’ engine, lights ‘aimed ahead’, and exhaust ‘turning red’. Also, technology is the reason for the death of nature as the car is the reason for the doe’s death. Another example of symbolism in Stafford’s poem is Wilson River Road. A road’s connotation means a path of life and the narrator of the poem wants to choose the right path of life. However, making the wrong choice, ‘swerving’ off course, can “make more dead”. The final illustration of symbolism is the dark. The dark is a symbol of evil and it brings a feel as if something bad is going to happen. Stafford starts out the poem with the title, “Traveling Through the Dark”, which means how the narrator is on the path of darkness, which brings uncertainty in people’s lives. In addition to symbolism, word choice also helps readers to interpret words and phrases. One example of connotation and denotation is the phrase from line eighteen, “Pushed her over the edge”. The denotation of the phrase means the narrator pushes the dead carcass of the doe into the canyon. The connotation means that the decision of the narrator to roll the deer into the canyon pushed the narrator’s emotions over the edge. Another example of word choice is the word river in the last line of the poem. A river’s connotation also means a path of life as rivers hold water and water also represents life. The river might symbolize the new life of the deer and its fawn. Word choice and symbolism are two poetic devices that help to discover the meanings of words and phrases other than their literal