TRAVELLING THROUGH THE DARK

 --William Stafford

What is the central idea of the poem “Travelling through the Dark”?

The central idea of the poem by Stafford is a conflict between the two worlds: the human and nature, civilization and wilderness, technology and the environment; emotion and reason, and life and death. 

Stafford illustrates grimly and rather uncomfortably a conflict that occurs when the human world intrudes on the natural one: the speaker finds “a dear/ dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.” He explains how modern civilization is threatening pure wilderness, that is, how technology—here, in the forms of cars and the man-made road—is invasive and harmful, and how it disturbs the order in nature. The motorways cost animals their lives and nature its calm wilderness that is polluted by the “exhaust” and disturbed by the engine that “[purs].” The living, unborn “fawn” inside the dead “doe” also forces the speaker to experience an acute sense of pain and guilt, and to reflect on this situation emotionally at first and then with reason, hence making him push the doe over the edge into the river and clear the route again for the other travelers to travel through the dark without swerving and without “[making] more dead.”