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

the woodchucks as a threat by showing the woodchuck with his “needle teeth still hooked in the leaf of early Swiss chard.” The adjective “needle” to the woodchuck’s teeth makes the woodchuck seem dangerous or destructive. The woodchucks are shown or portrayed as threat to farm, rather than a pleasant harmless animal grazing in the field. When the speaker kills the woodchuck in the “everbearing roses”, the speaker makes the readers feel as if there is no end to the woodchucks. The word “everbearing” gives the connotation of endless and annoying. Thus the term “everbearing roses” implies that the threat of the woodchucks will not end. Another example of the woodchucks being considered a threat is when the speaker surveys the path of destruction the woodchuck takes. They “brought down the marigolds” and continued “beheading the carrots.” The term beheading” leaves an unpleasant, violent, threatening aftertaste. This gives the connotation of the woodchucks being something bad, a threat.
The tone of the poem helps show what the author thinks the speaker feels. The author thinks that the speaker enjoys killing the woodchucks, and is unable to stop until they are all dead. When the speaker says that he is a “lapsed pacifist fallen from grace puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing”, his tone is resigned. The word “lapsed” shows how the author thinks the speaker has given up on his peace keeping ideals, and started on the path of his violent motives, willingly. When the speaker says that he was “righteously thrilling to the feel of the .22 the bullets’ neat noses”, the author is showing that the speaker enjoys the feel of a gun in his hand. A gun is a weapon of violence therefore the speaker is embracing his inner violence, while letting go of his peace. The speaker feels enlightened in a bad way. Even when the speaker sleeps he says I “dream I sight along the barrel in sleep.” The reader’s excitement over killing turns into his own obsession. He enjoys killing enough to make the “murderer inside me rose up hard, the hawkeye killer came on forthwith.” He feels the zeal to kill. Thus the poem shows that the speaker enjoys killing.
The allusions and metaphors help the author show how the speakers of the poem try to justify their violence by blaming the woodchucks for refusing to die the humane way rather than the inhumane.

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

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, humans lose their humanity or ability to think of the worth of life. They lose their judgement and logicality as well. In order to develop these deeper concepts of humanity, Woodchucks uses connotations, tone, and allusions. Thus, the theme of the poem does take into account the connotations, tone, allusions and metaphors.