The Observer

Reader response of “Traveling Through the Dark.”

         This is my reader response to the poem featured in the link below.  It was for Literary Criticism class.  I thought the poem was beautiful, so I decided to share.

   http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~richie/poetry/html/poem185.html   

               William Stafford’s poem, “Traveling Through the Dark,” is a complex poem open for interpretation by its readers.  It is clear that the poem itself is not simply about a pregnant deer on the side of the road.  In order to grasp the meaning, one must look deeper, applying the words of the poem in reasonable comparisons to everyday life.

                The part of the poem that truly gives away its deeper meaning is not in the initial metaphor.  It is not in the description of the “Fawn…never to be born,” or the stiffened body, “almost cold.”  The part that gives away the deeper complexity of the writing is contained within one line, “I thought hard for us all.”  In this simple line, the poet compares this scene to humanity.  It gives away the metaphor and instantly makes the poem heavier, with more meaning than before, while making it more understandable.

                In saying that he “thought hard for all of us,” the narrator applies the thinking process of pushing a pregnant animal over a cliff to the thinking process of humans in the death of their own race.  When the narrator comes across the deer, he feels badly, as most would.  He felt for the unborn faun, shown in his hesitation to push the body over the edge.  This feeling is comparable to human beings.  We feel badly when we hear of others who have died, yet we simply push the thought out of our minds after stating how sad it is that so many people had to die.  Our complacency consumes us as we turn our heads from the riots and killings strewn over news channels, and as the narrator of “Travelling Through the Dark” pushes the deer over the edge of a cliff, we forget about the countless who have died, never changing our mindset or allowing it to affect our daily lives.

                For instance, in theory, there are those who think that abortion is wrong.  Yet, when faced with the problem of a girlfriend who has become pregnant, when faced with the problem of the possibility of a child coming into the world with the potential of ruining their lives, how many people would push that child over the edge?  Of course, they would remember their “beliefs,” knowing that they’ve stated before that abortion is wrong, but when faced with it themselves, their only hesitation would be a momentary one, their “only swerving” being a slight guilt felt from their broken morality.

                “The wilderness listen[s]” and yet does nothing.  The wilderness hears the killing of new life and simply listens on.  The world listens to the killings of human beings in civil wars and political uprisings and yet it does nothing.  The world is silent as nature is silent, for each person attends to his or her own needs, ignorant (save for their momentary feeling of self serving guilt) of starving children, of dying mothers, and of deer being pushed over a cliff, fat with child.

Dear Reader

A wise mentor of mine told me today to resist the urge to see others as “stupid robotic inferiors” and to learn from them, to make a conscious attempt to view the world through different perspectives.

This is difficult for me to do.  I know that in some of my writings, I may come off as arrogant, encouraging you to put conscious thought above all else, urging you to resist becoming the unthinking human, the robot who follows and does not listen, the one who watches with blind eyes the happenings of the world but refuses to analyze them…

 These people that I urge you not to be are part of your journey, and you can learn from them.  After all, they are human, and as much as you may not like to admit it, so are you.  And so am I.  i can tell you, I don’t like to admit it.  Watch them.  Place yourself in a position where you can see the people around you through an enlightened perspective.  This is a place where you aren’t hurt easily; a place where you are armed with the knowledge of who you are.  In watching others, in observation, we can learn from them.  We can learn who not to be, we can learn new modes of thinking that may very well change our lives, we can learn more about our own minds, for there are things within our minds that we may not have discovered yet.

Many see my words and claim I urge you to be like me, but by no means am I a final product, or even something to model oneself after.  I want to stress to you that I’m in the same place you may be.  I struggle with myself.  I wage war inside my head, between different philosophies, between what is and is not my self.  I’m on a journey of discovery, just as many of you may be.  I’m discovering my mind as I go, creating new ideas, throwing out old ones to replace them with those sturdier, fortified with beliefs and truths I’ve come upon.  The mind is in a constant state of motion: changing, transforming, and hopefully becoming more and more beautiful, being closer to identifying its vessel.

Our lives are dependent on healthy self improvement, on making oneself all he or she can be.  To be completely distant, to avoid observing your fellow human beings, to avoid empathy and compassion for those who want it is dooming yourself to learn from only yourself.  With your own mind as the only source of knowledge, you will never reach your full potential.  It is only by observing the world around us that we are able to grow.  For upon realizing what we are not, we can come to the educated and enlightening conclusion of what we are.