The speaker in William Stafford's "Traveling through the Dark" dramatizes an incident that forced him to make a life and death decision.
Stafford’s “Traveling through the Dark” consists of five unrimed stanzas. The first four contain four lines, and the final stanza merely two.
First Stanza: “Traveling through the dark I found a deer”
In the first stanza, the speaker introduces the event: he is driving his car on treacherous winding road when suddenly he sees a dead deer in the road. Immediately, the speaker realizes what he must do: “It is usually best to roll them into the canyon.”
So the reader understands that this is not a new situation for the speaker; the speaker has had to shove dead deer off the road into the canyon many times before. And the speaker makes it clear that to leave the deer lying in the road could cause an unwary motorist to swerve and go toppling into the canyon, which “might make more dead.”
Second Stanza: “By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car”
The speaker then continues, to report the details of what he did next: he got out of the car, which he parked just ahead of the deer carcass, and “stumbled back of the car.” He examines the deer and finds that she has “stiffened already” and she was “almost cold.” But as he drags her body over to the lip of the canyon, he notices that “she was large in the belly.” This poor doe is pregnant!
Third Stanza: “My fingers touching her side brought me the reason”
The speaker can tell that the doe has a fawn inside her, because “her side was warm.” The baby was still alive. This turn of events causes the speaker to reconsider. Pushing an ordinary dead deer off the side of the cliff is one thing, but here is a deer whose baby is alive, almost ready to be born.
He knows that if he pushes the dead doe over the cliff, he is killing the unborn fawn, so “[b]eside that mountain road [he] hesitated.” Despite the fact that a car could come careening around the bend any moment, the gravity of the situation catches the speaker off guard and makes wonder how could he just callously toss away this innocent life?
Fourth Stanza: “The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights”
The fourth stanza describes the scene and acts as a time/place-holder while the speaker mulls over his alternatives. He notes the “lowered parking light,” the engine “purr[ing]” “under the hood,” while he “stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red; / around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.” All of these images portray the setting in which the speaker has but a few seconds to decide what to do.
There are two options, so it might seem. He could try to deliver the fawn to save its life. Of course, he would prefer to save to fawn. But he quickly realizes that this option is not an option at all. He could not perform such surgery there on that dark mountain road, and even if he could successfully deliver the fawn, he knows he could not keep it alive.
Fifth Stanza: “I thought hard for us all—my only swerving”
The fifth stanza caps the events by asserting that the speaker thought “hard” about what to do. He calls his hesitation “my only swerving,” because when he realized that the doe was with fawn, his straight-forward action was tossed a curve.
But he finally comes to the conclusion that he has no choice but to try to save other human lives before it was too late so he “pushe[s] her over the edge into the river.”
