Questions

Traveling through the dark-
1. The speaker in this poem has a dilemma about whether to push the dead pregnant doe into the river and kill the still living baby inside or leave it on the road and hope someone else who comes along can do something to help it. I think the speaker did the right thing to push the deer over the edge rather than risk the deaths of many more people who are driving down the road and swerve to avoid the body laying on the shoulder. the fact that the speaker calls his hesitation his only swerving suggests that he didn't have to swerve to get out of the way of the deer, but stopped and got out to see what he could do to help. He calls his hesitation swerving because because he is going back and forth in his head trying to decide what to do about the deer.

2. Tactile imagery- "she had stiffened already, almost cold...her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting". The contrast between the stiff and cooling body of the doe and the warmth that is coming from the unborn fawn inside of her is something that would have made me hesitate too. Auditory imagery- "under the hood purred the steady engine." I could almost hear the car engine and feel the exhaust. The fact that the speaker left the car running shows us that he wasn't planning to stand there for a long time debating what to do about the deer. He was just planning to push her over the edge.

3. It could be argued that there is similarities between the 2nd and 4th lines in every 4 line stanza. It could also be argued that the 1st and 3rd lines of stanzas 2 and 3 work together to give you a better picture as you are reading the poem. The end of the concluding couplet gives me a kind of depressing outlook on the poem. The end of the second stanza doesn't really fit in with the rest. The ends of the other stanzas talk about death, and the hesitation of the speaker. In one line it says "...i could hear the wilderness listen." meaning that the speaker felt the pressure of nature even wondering what he would decide. And the last line speaks of him pushing the doe into the river, choosing for the unborn fawn to die.

Counting Out Rhyme-
Fielding, I looked in the whole poetry section and this poem isn't in there.