Woodchucks By Maxine Kumin Summary

Poetry Analysis

Maxine Kumin’s poem Woodchucks is not simply a farmer’s irritation over a couple of pesky woodchucks. The subject does have to do with humans having the tendency to become violent when provoked. However the theme of the poem takes a much darker path showing how it only takes something small to turn any normal humane person into a heartless murderer. The theme evolves by using dark references to the holocaust and basic Darwinist principles. These references are made through connotation, tone, allusions and metaphors.

Connotation allows the author to present the woodchucks as a threat to the speaker, and allows the speaker to justify killing the woodchucks personally, rather than by a gas bomb. The speaker is able to portray

He say the woodchucks are “no worse for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes and state-store Scotch.” When the speaker says this, what he is trying to say is that the woodchucks are responsible for turning him into a murderer. In other words, the woodchucks brought their own deaths upon themselves. Another example of the speaker using allusions and metaphors justify his actions is when he says “if only they had all consented to die unseen the quiet Nazi way.” Meaning if they had died unseen from him, the speaker would not have turned into a murderer, and killed them himself. The “Nazi way”, refers to how the Nazis use to put all the victims of the concentration camps into a gas room, and kill them. The last example was when the speaker considered the knockout gas bomb as more “merciful and quick at the bone.” What the speaker was trying to say was that he wished that all the woodchucks had died gassed without him having to kill them more violently. Therefore the allusions and metaphors help show how the speaker thinks the woodchucks are responsible for their own