Summary Of Woodchucks By Maxine Kumin

World War II is a major historical event of a conflict between two different groups of people in which a multitude perished. "Woodchucks", a poem by Maxine Kumin, reflects a narrator wanting a pest gone from her garden. The narrator thinks that all the woodchucks accomplish is to cause problems; however, they are most likely not as enormous of a problem as the narrator perceives them to be. When the first, and most humane way, is not executed properly the narrator must find a new way to destroy the woodchucks once and for all. The poem, "Woodchucks", by Maxine Kumin can be interpreted as a person killing pests; however, in reality the poem, through descriptive language, portrays the Nazi's extermination of the Jews.

"Woodchucks" is a poem

Comparatively, Germany was going through many problems when the Nazi rose to power. They promised a better place without problems, but for this to work they needed a scapegoat. The Nazis blamed the Jews which is paralleled in the poem by the narrator blaming the woodchucks. As anger rises up in the narrator this creates a shift in the poem as the narrator experiences the "righteously thrilling... feel of the .22". Therefore, the narrator becomes bolder and assumes the only way to solve the problem is to shoot the woodchucks. Later in the war the Nazi's became more bold and began producing mass graves and shooting thousands of people. As the narrator describes the killings, she personifies the woodchucks into a family. Frist she "dropped the mother...another baby next" until there is only "one chuck left", the father. While in comparison the Nazis would split up families; they would kill the babies and mothers, and leave the men to work until they could not work anymore. In the case of the poem the father manages to escape the narrator, but that does not stop her from "all night hunting his humped-up form". As she is obsessed with killing every last one of the woodchucks that created her problems in the first