Traveling through the Dark by William Stafford and Woodchucks by Maxine Kumin are both short poems dealing with cruel acts perpetrated towards animals. In Traveling Through the Dark this takes the form of the author pushing a dead deer, pregnant with a still alive foal, off a cliff. Meanwhile, in Woodchucks the narrator attempts to gas and later shoots the title animal in a manner reminiscent of Nazi’s persecution of Jews in the Holocaust. While these poems are on similar topics, differences in their meaning appear when looking deeper. Woodchucks uses a fairly regular rhyme scheme and a series of short sentences and phrases, diction heavy with weapon references and allusions to historical atrocities, and detailed descriptions to create a maniacal tone, which is thus critical of many human actions. Meanwhile, Traveling uses a form similar to a couplet but lacking rhyme and meter and with an extra stanza, an emphasis on car diction and interesting use of pronouns, and description shifting from the deer to the car, creating a tone threat shifts from reverent to distant, making the actions of the speaker seem weighty, but necessary. …show more content…
One part of this difference in the structure of the poem, as Traveling has elements that allow it to be a slower more contemplative poem. While Traveling shares with Woodchucks a majority for end stopped lines, it lakes the latters rhyme scheme. This helps to keep the poem from building much rhythm. In addition, there are several examples of caesura in the poem such as “that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead” and “and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing.” These inline breaks help to create natural pauses in the poem, much like the narrator stopping and thinking, which sharply contrasts to the quick, rushed pace of the narrator in
Both poems use repetition of phrases and anaphora to establish a pace for the speaker’s voice. The repeating syllables provide a pseudo-break in
From the combination of enjambed and end-stopped lines, the reader almost physically feels the emphasis on certain lines, but also feels confusion where a line does not end. Although the poem lacks a rhyme scheme, lines like “…not long after the disaster / as our train was passing Astor” and “…my eyes and ears…I couldn't think or hear,” display internal rhyme. The tone of the narrator changes multiple times throughout the poem. It begins with a seemingly sad train ride, but quickly escalates when “a girl came flying down the aisle.” During the grand entrance, imagery helps show the importance of the girl and how her visit took place in a short period of time. After the girl’s entrance, the narrator describes the girl as a “spector,” or ghost-like figure in a calm, but confused tone. The turning point of the poem occurs when the girl “stopped for me [the narrator]” and then “we [the girl and the narrator] dove under the river.” The narrator speaks in a fast, hectic tone because the girl “squeez[ed] till the birds began to stir” and causes her to not “think or hear / or breathe or see.” Then, the tone dramatically changes, and becomes calm when the narrator says, “so silently I thanked her,” showing the moment of
Organization is a key element in Frazier's and Oliver's work, as it works directly to set the tone, as well as acting as a symbol of nature. Charles Frazier writes in long, descriptive sentences and paragraphs. These, along with the carefully chosen words in the smooth sentences, create a relaxing, peaceful tone and feel to the story. This tone reflects on the symbolic part of structure; that nature works in smooth, careful ways; everything is planned. On the other hand, Oliver writes in broken, choppy sentences, often breaking in the middle and resuming the next line down. This makes for a mysterious, erratic tone towards nature, as well as the blue heron. The blue heron, in this poem, acts rigidly and harshly in movement (as reflected by the short, fragmented sentences), while in Cold Mountain, the heron is smooth and graceful. Punctuation also adds to tone with respect to the blue heron. In Cold Mountain, the paragraphs often end in ways such as "after a deep reflection..." and "coming up short...." These rounds out the passages, allowing them to come to a gradual close instead of short, abrupt finishes to the sentences. This affects the tone of the passage as well as relates to the author's attitude towards the heron. In this passage, the heron moves slowly and steadily, with no abrupt motions, leading to a smooth and constant tone. However, the poem ends all sentences with a...
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.
The long lines that open the poem represent the movement of the bus through the landscape. When it stops moving to pick up the “lone traveler” in the sixth stanza, it stops the long sentence that has been running since the start of the poem. As the bus resumes and picks up speed, the lines follow suit. It is night, and therefore dark as the bus enters the tree line of the thick woods of New Brunswick. Here, an important change occurs, when a drastic landscape shifts occurs;
“One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.” Said by Voltaire can describe the two poems, Seventeen by Andrew Hudgins and Traveling through the Dark by William Stafford. Both poems are written in a prose fashion but mean so much more than the written words. At a glance, the poems both seem to be about the tragic deaths of animals; however, the poems differ in their themes of growing up in Seventeen and the intermixing of technology with man and nature in Traveling through the Dark.
The ambiguity which dominates the poem seems to be intentional. The only certainty in the poem is that it deals with a solitary traveler who has come to a fork in the road and must choose which way to go.
While reading this poem I was able to visualize the speaker looking far down both paths to see what each of them would bring. Though the speaker's sight is somewhat limited, on...
The Black Cat, by Edgar Allen Poe, is a story about a man whose love for animals is overcome by an extreme hatred toward the creatures. What goes around comes around is a saying that would most effectively convey the message of this story because Poe implies that people will inevitably suffer the consequences of their actions. Through the careful construction of plot, the ongoing use of irony, and the rapid development of character, Poe captures the reader’s undivided attention and evokes a wide variety of emotions through this short story
In the poem, a person is walking along a path in an autumn forest in the early hours of the morning, when he stumbles upon a fork in the road. The speaker wishes that he would be able to travel down both of them, but he has places to go, and he does not have enough time. One is worn out from people walking along it so much, and the other is grassy and barely worn from fewer people walking on it. Although neither of them had been traveled on that day, as the leaves were still fresh on the ground, the speaker was compelled to travel the second or grassier path. The speaker fin...
The first stanza introduced the reader to the decision the author would have to make. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" to me signified that the result of his decision would arise from the same origin to which in my own life, I can reflect on. And though he would like to have seen the outcome of both paths, he knew he could only choose one. And to help him decide, he would look down both choices and see only until the road took a bend.
Through alliteration and imagery, Coleridge turns the words of the poem into a system of symbols that become unfixed to the reader. Coleridge uses alliteration throughout the poem, in which the reader “hovers” between imagination and reality. As the reader moves through the poem, they feel as if they are traveling along a river, “five miles meandering with a mazy motion” (25). The words become a symbol of a slow moving river and as the reader travels along the river, they are also traveling through each stanza. This creates a scene that the viewer can turn words into symbols while in reality they are just reading text. Coleridge is also able to illustrate a suspension of the mind through imagery; done so by producing images that are unfixed to the r...
The two roads presented in this poem represent difficult decisions we are faced with in life. He uses the relationship between the paths and real life decisions throughout the whole poem. This is an example of extended metaphor, which is used to help the readers understand the analogy between the two. The man in the poem said: “long I stood” (3), which lets us know the decision was not made instantly. It was hard for the man to make a final judgment.
The overarching theme throughout the entire poem is that of choices. The concept of “two roads diverged,” or a split in the road, is a metaphor representing a choice which the narrator must make. Being “sorry [he] could not travel both… [being] one traveler” illustrates that, although he wishes he could see the results of both choices, as seen in saying he “looked as far as [he] could to where it bent,” he is but one pers...
The main theme of the poem that Frost attempts to convey is how important the decisions that one makes can be, and how they affect one’s future. In lines 2-3, he expresses the emotions of doubt and confusion by saying, “And sorry I could not travel/ And be one traveler, long I stood”, which explains how the speaker contemplated their decision of which road to take. In the closing, line 20 of the poem further reestablishes the theme when it states, “that has made all the difference”, meaning that making the decision of which road to take for themselves is the important key for a successful future. Frost helps to express this theme by using symbolism to portray a road as one’s journey of life. Using symbolism, Frost suggests that the speaker of this poem is taking the harder of the two roads presented before them, because the road the speaker chooses, “leaves no step had trodden black” (12...