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The topic of woodchucks poem
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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 says 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 to 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 death.
Maxine Kumin uses connotation, tone, allusions and metaphors to reference the holocaust and Social Darwinist principle, while developing the theme of the poem. The theme the author is hinting at is that when killing,
Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” does a marvelous job of highlighting the violent nature of mankind. The underlying cause of this violent nature can be analyzed from three perspectives, the first being where the occurrence of violence takes place, the second man’s need to be led and the way their leader leads them, and lastly whether violence is truly an innate and inherent characteristic in man.
The Holocaust was a tragic event in history which instilled fear and sorrow in so many. This time can be seen as one without order, because the law at the time said the actions taken were just (epigraph translation). A poet was able, however, to take such a chaotic time in history in the poem The Book of Yolek, and create a more personal attachment (for the reader) to the topic. The poet Anthony Hecht has taken the Holocaust (more specifically the moving of Jewish orphans to a concentration camp) and made it simple and nostalgic, taking a more calm approach to the subject ("5th August 1942: Warsaw Orphans Leave for Treblinka"). By using the form of a Sestina (very precise form difficult to properly do), along with the images, rhetorical use of grammar, and the tone portrayed throughout the piece, Anthony Hecht demonstrates a peaceful outlook can be given to the most chaotic moments in human life (Strand et al. 20). However, he also demonstrates the need for emotional attachment when referring to an occurrence (in history) of the past.
“I'm not talking about YOUR book now, but look at how many books have already been written about the Holocaust. What's the point? People haven't changed... Maybe they need a newer, bigger Holocaust.” These words were spoken by author Art Spielgelman. Many books have been written about the Holocaust; however, only one book comically describes the non-superficial characteristics of it. Art Spiegelman authors a graphic novel titled Maus, a book surrounding the life a Jewish man living in Poland, named Vladek. His son, Art Spielgelman, was primarily focused on writing a book based on his father’s experiences during the Holocaust. While this was his main focus, his book includes unique personal experiences, those of which are not commonly described in other Holocaust books. Art’s book includes the troubles his mother, Anja, and his father, Vladek, conquered during their marriage and with their family; also, how his parents tried to avoid their children being victimized through the troubles. The book includes other main characters, such as: Richieu Spiegelman, Vladek first son; Mala Spiegelman, Vladek second wife; and Françoise, Art’s French wife. Being that this is a graphic novel, it expresses the most significant background of the story. The most significant aspect about the book is how the characters are dehumanized as animals. The Jewish people were portrayed as mice, the Polish as pigs, the Germans (Nazis in particular) as cats, and Americans as dogs. There are many possible reasons why Spiegelman uses animals instead of humans. Spiegelman uses cats, dogs, and mice to express visual interests in relative relationships and common stereotypes among Jews, Germans, and Americans.
In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker clearly identifies that some woodchucks are annoying her. To solve this problem, the speaker uses gas as a way to eliminate the pests quickly and painlessly much like the Nazis tried to eradicate the Jews from their presence. Gassing the woodchucks is an easy way to remove the pests because using gas does not involve looking at the victims as they are put to death. This is also why the Nazis used the gassing methods to kill the Jews. After time this method was not as widely used due to the resilience of the woodchucks and Jews. Thus, this led the killers to use more ruthless techniques.
...gen who portrays the Policemen as “Ordinary Germans” who willingly took part in the killing. This means he portrays them as a whole, who all reacted in the same way because they were all socially conditioned in eliminaitonalist anti-Semitism. For this reason a completely different portrayal of the perpetrators of the Holocaust is offered in each book, each defined by the way each historian views the way the German’s worked.
A.S. Byatt uses symbolism in her story “The Thing in the Forest” to show how children in England during World War II, like herself, felt and reacted to the events that they knew where bad but didn’t understand. This can easily be shown through the sequencing of the plot, the deeper meanings behind characters and places, and the post effects it had the main characters.
World War I and II brought the worst of times for some people; loved ones were lost, families were separated, homes were destroyed, and innocent lives were taken during this time. There are many ways to deal with these hardships; Jewish poet, Avrom Sutzkever, used his hard times as inspiration for his writing and as a way to deal with the war and survive it (INSERT CITATION). This part of history also resulted in other great works of art as a way to deal with what the war brought, during and after the war was over. Avrom Sutzkever wrote his poem “Frozen Jews,” using such dark and depressing imagery, connotation, and diction because of his historical and biographical background.
One of the evident drawbacks of having animals depict human characters, is that they are figuratively and literally dehumanized. Humans are more complex than their primitive desires, impulses, and needs; and this fact could very easily be lost in translation with this choice of illustration. For example, it could be interpreted that the Germans who were drawn as cats, were behaving like the carnivorous species that they are, and chasing mice, because it is encoded in their natural instincts and a part of their primitive behaviour. This exempts the perpetrators, since it implies their lack of free will was affecting their every decision. It also implies that since the Germans are another specie, the mass murder of millions of people could never have happened by any other nationality, and that evil actions are based upon ethnicity, rather than a human’s negligence from their moral standings. However, Spiegelman was able to slightly deter from this indiscretion by giving each character dynamic personalities and pragmatic
...e by the desire to hunt and kill and how they are putting themselves at risk by venturing into unknown, unsafe land. Hence, the reoccurring them that humans are naturally savage is evident in this passage. With savagery comes danger, reinforcing the feeling that the boys will encounter trouble.
Maxine Kumin Maxine Kumin, who experienced many different views of the world through travel, feels the most comfortable in New Hampshire, her rural home. In any area that she travels, she always makes a similarity to her home, as expressed in her poems. In her poem, “The Long Approach”, she is driving in her Saab hatchback from Scranton to her farm in New Hampshire. She also discusses her plane ride back from Orlando to New Hampshire the week before. Throughout the poem she makes references back to the animals she cares for and comes in contact with on the farm.
...ough. He also compares himself with his dead brother because he thinks his dad favors him since he lived through the same experiences. This survivor’s guilt is even seen in his father, since he takes out his guilt of surviving, when many of his friends and family did not, on his son. Guilt is one of the driving factors of this book, and shows how the greater society feels towards the Holocaust. Society feels guilty for not doing anything to stop the Nazis. Many people knew what was going on, yet they didn’t stop them. Even people in the Jewish community heard of what was happening, but didn’t believe them. Now after everything is said and done, the feel guilty for what happened. Just as Art feels guilty for not living through it, society as a whole feels guilty for not stepping in. No one truly survived the Holocaust since the guilt is constantly weighing on them.
The imagination and the ability to empathize with others is the key to living a wider life, a key to escaping the prison of a limited self. But, imagination and identification are also menacing. As we read and listen to the words of survivors, as we study the Holocaust from all points of view, our imaginations threaten us. As I pick up Elie Wiesel's novel Night, I take the Holocaust in my hands, and I hear children's' voices in the dark. I am afraid for them and for myself. First, I am afraid my imagination will fail me, and I will be overwhelmed. The terror and humiliation of the Holocaust may so numb me that I will go into "shock." I will isolate myself, deny everything -- suffering, empathy, mercy, family, God. I will experience what Wiesel experienced when his father was struck and he did nothing (36-37), or, in the end, I will abandon my father. Wiesel says to me, "I awoke on January 29 at dawn. In my father's place lay another invalid. They must have taken him away before dawn an...
Although to Todd it seemed like the relationship between him and Dussander was one-sided, the old war criminal was benefiting from it as well. He was reborn. Never in so long did the old man feel so alive, just like the good old days at Patin. The two of them were like parasites to each other. Todd, feeding his inner evil with stories of war, and Dussander, reliving his younger years by telling them. But both began to realize that stories could not keep them happy. There urge for a greater evil built up like a snowball rolling down a hill. Bigger and bigger it got. The forgotten tales of the thousands of Jews herded into gas chambers must have rekindled some evil spirit living in Kurt Dussander, and was trying to escape. Almost like a trance, he lured a cat by enticing it with a bowl of milk, grabbed it, and threw it into a gas stove. An evil grin came upon his face as he listened to the cat scream.
Judith Wright's poem `The Killer' explores the relationship between Humans and Nature, and provides an insight into the primitive instincts which characterize both the speaker and the subject. These aspects of the poem find expression in the irony of the title and are also underlined by the various technical devices employed by the poet.
In her book, On Violence, Hannah Arendt studies violence as it relates to war, science, power, aggression, and the like. In this paper, I will speak on the topic of violence as it pertains to aggression. I argue that we, as human beings, possess at least a basic level of aggression that is explainable through animalistic research and characteristics. This argument is one that contradicts the overarching ideas of Arendt’s thoughts on the topic. Through an explicative and then disputatious discourse, I hope to bring validity to my viewpoint.