Atrocities in Stafford's Traveling Through the DarkIs an impulse just an impulse, or is it a metaphor that gives an appreciation of the fragility of life while simultaneously lamenting man's inability to confront or adequately understand death? William Stafford's "Traveling Through the Dark" illustrates the mechanisms by which seemingly mundane events become investigations into the mystery and ambiguity of the human condition. The situation of the poem is simple: a lone traveler driving along a desolate canyon road sees a slaughtered deer; the traveler, not wanting to hit the deer or swerve to avoid it, rushes his car over the precipice of the canyon, stops his vehicle and begins to push the fallen animal over the face of the canyon, into the river below. As the driver struggles to move the cold, stiff corpse of the deer, he feels the heat emanating from its abdomen, it is an unborn fawn. Realizing that life remains in the body he thought was dead, the traveler hesitates. Finally, he pushes the deer, one dead and the other not yet alive, off the road and into the sinkhole. If the situation of the poem is simple, its theme is not. Stafford seems to imply that life is precious and fragile; however, nothing reveals these attributes of life as clearly as the confrontation with death. Moreover, the very confrontations that engender appreciation of the delights of life compel action, to the point of often callous action. Therefore, the tone of the poem contains elements of remorse as well as impassivity. The traveler's detached description of the mother, "...a doe, a recent murder; / she had already stiffened, almost cold" (6-7), and the nostalgic details with which he depicts his unborn offspring , "...his fawn was waiting there...... middle of paper ......iver. Because the deer's killer was a man driving an automobile, the traveler shares with him a certain relationship with the traveler's anguish, his "bleeding", is the realization that he is involved in the murder of the deer through his association with the real killer. If further developed, this metaphor can be applied to the entire human experience. All humanity is like a traveler passing through darkness. At different crossroads of our experiences, we are inevitably both the discoverers and perpetrators of atrocities; the confusion that surrounds our responses at these crossroads is the darkness we navigate. Stafford ends the poem after the traveler pushes the deer into the depths of the canyon. There is no need to be told to return to his car and continue on his way, we know this intrinsically, this is what each of us would have done, what each of us must do.