I Will Follow You into the Dark

According to Stafford’s poem “Traveling Through the Dark,” the lives of dozens of drivers are more important than the life of a single baby deer. I would definitely agree, but it’s still natural to hesitate to condemn a fawn to death. The speaker of the poem faces this same moral conflict and chooses to protect other drivers. Stafford uses the broken-up form and imagery to make this moral conflict more powerful by putting readers inside the tragedy of the scene.

Stafford uses a carefully laid-out form to present the speaker’s moral dilemma. The format follows the an outline of eighteen lines organized in four quatrains with a concluding couplet. The poem has no rhyme scheme but has lots of similar sounding words to end lines as well as interspersed alliteration. Even so, the structure is ideal because it allows the dilemma to be presented slowly and therefore immerses the reader in the story.

In the first and second stanzas, we are introduced to the moral conflict in a benign way so don’t question the speaker as he prepares to throw the dead deer in the canyon. We aren’t lead to question the “usually best” way of handling the problem at all. In the third stanza, however, we realize the situation is more complicated when the speaker realizes the dead doe’s fawn is still alive inside her. In the fourth stanza, the tension builds as we and the speaker wonder what he’ll do now that he would be taking a life himself. In the concluding couplet, in English sonnet style, the speaker’s moral dilemma is cleared and he decides to roll the deer into the canyon in order to save other people driving on the road. Stafford uses the English sonnet form to break up this progression, which allows the reader to process the moral dilemma fully and be more immersed in the speaker’s conflict as it progresses. As we read the poem, we follow the same line of thought as the speaker and, like him, conclude that the right thing to roll the deer into the canyon.

Stafford also uses imagery to touch several of our senses and immerse us in the poem’s story and conflict. Firstly, he prods our sense of sight with descriptions of the mountain road. We can picture the road so narrow that “to swerve might make more dead;” the “glow of the tail light,” and the plump figure of the dead doe. He also stimulates our sense of touch. The sadness of the speaker’s predicament becomes more real when we can nearly feel the warmth of the fawn within the doe’s cold body and the warmth of the car’s exhaust. The final sense he arouses to submerge us in the poem is the sense of hearing. In the decisive moment of the poem, we can “hear the wilderness listen” as if waiting to hear the fawn’s fate while the car engine purrs in the background. We can feel the cold and suspense. The imagery makes the poem feel real and we hesitate with the speaker as the sadness of the moment becomes clear.

With any ethical dilemma, the inner-conflict is always hardest for the people involved. By using detailed imagery and pointed structure, Stafford puts us in the speaker’s shoes and forces us to enter in the same internal conflict. Because of the imagery, we are there on the mountain road with the swallowing silence and helpless fawn. The structure allows us to process the scene and the conflict without losing us in a feuding or hurried stream of consciousness. Our reading experience mirrors the speaker’s experience as we are all forced to make a heartbreaking decision to choose many lives over one. (620)