"Traveling through the dark" explication

    The speaker in “Traveling through the dark” by William Stafford has a dilemma that is very heartbreaking. They have to make a moral decision to the events that happen to them as well as the readers reflect on their feelings towards what he/she does. The speaker finds a dead deer on the side of the road and decides to roll the body into the canyon so people don’t “swerve” and hit it, for Stafford writes, “to swerve might make more dead”. The speaker soon discovers that it is a doe who has just recently been killed and also pregnant. Her fawn was still barely alive and thus the speaker’s problem arises. Eventually, after silently deliberating, they decide to push both deer into the river. In hindsight, there really was nothing he/she could have done, especially in a setting where the stakes are high. The second to last line is particularly unnerving. Stafford writes, “I thought hard for us all-my only swerving-” When the word “swerve” was mentioned before, it was not emphasized at all. After finishing the poem, readers realize that Stafford was foreshadowing a kind of fatal occurrence using the word in that particular phrase. In the last pair of lines, the meaning behind “swerve” still relates to the theme of hesitation and being so close to an awful demise. Though the poem is rather grotesque in subject, the imagery in the poem is beautiful. Stafford describes the woods and road around him as well as how the dead deer was cold but the side of her belly where the fawn was warm-symbolizing life and death. There are other symbols such as the overwhelming darkness that is apparent throughout the poem (and obviously in the title) as well as the presence of the river symbolizing his change in character. As for the rhyme scheme and musical devices, it was difficult at first to spot the pattern and variations in the poem. With help from the questions, I was able to see that in the first stanza, the  last words of the first and fourth line were assonance. Same in the third and fourth stanza. In the third stanza it appears again but this time in the first and third lines.  In the last couplet, the ending words have a consonance. I find it interesting how the quatrains all have assonance-which is repetition at the beginning of the word and how the last couplet had consonance which is repetition on the final consonant sounds. I also wonder if the word “canyon” is important because it does not really pair with another word in the scheme. It is also peculiar because the puts the deer in the river instead of the canyon as if to hide what they have done. The poem altogether makes one reflect on actions and morals in times of darkness in this creep poem about life and death in a single moment.