Woodchucks by Maxine Kumin
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After reading the poem, the speaker portrayed in “Woodchucks” by Maxine Kumin acts as an extended evil which has potential in all of us. In the poem, the speaker starts off attempting to get rid of a rodent problem as humanely as possible. However, when that doesn’t work, he quickly turns to violence. Referencing an ultimate evil in the poem, the Nazis, the speaker takes quickly to making these woodchucks to suffer like jews in the holocaust. This is especially true in how the speaker talks of gassing them a classic nazi tactic in their “final”solution”. However, “Woodchucks” is less about one specific vent, the speaker is giving us a look into the ability for evil to arise in all people which can lead to those events. In the first two incidents the speaker is clearly trying to kill off the woodchucks in the most painless way possible. The gas bomb being used is described as “merciful and quick at the bone.” Despite the effort, it is discovered that the woodchucks were able to stay alive . This is where the speaker seems to shift tones from nonviolent to more aggressive.
The speaker begins the poem by describing a humane and discreet way of killing the woodchucks. She traps them underground and tries to poison them. When that fails this is where her nonviolent anger turns aggressive. The woodchucks eat her marigolds, broccoli, and carrots, her indignation deepens into what she believes is pure anger and aggression, and she takes to shooting them with a rifle.Her justification for killing the woodchucks is that they are stealing “the food from our mouths.” She talks of Darwins “survival of the fittest” and takes pleasure in killing, one after another, a whole family of woodchucks, gloating at how quickly she has became a sniper, taking them down one by one. She even uses slang descriptions like “I dropped the mother.” She recognizes her obsession with one woodchuck who runs from her and wonders why he and the other woodchucks couldnt just die in like the Nazis victims, quietly poisoned, out of view for good. Its as if she blames them for steering her overt aggression, something she might prefer to keep under the table. The speaker gives emphasis on how readily peoples anger is awakened when they feel provoked. It is ironic that Darwins name should be invoked, because the speakers response is not a very “evolved” way of thinking.
The speaker