Woodchucks

Woodchucks Does animal behaviour reflect human habits' In Maxine Kumins' poem "The Woodchucks" this obvious comparison is presented. Almost immediately in the first stanza is the reader introduced to the notion of gassing woodchucks. To make this theme more prominent, in the last stanza, one word is used to emphasize this connection. This word is "Nazi". Kumin writes a satirical poem that compares the gassing of woodchucks to the gassing of Jewish people in World War Two. The poem introduces an obsessive compulsive speaker who acquires a lust for killing woodchucks. Maxine Kumin presents a convincing reflection of animal versus human behaviour through her themes of power, genocide and excellent word choice.. The obsessive compulsive character in this poem has an obvious sense of hierarchy. It is almost as though this poem is written to infer that killing woodchucks is a justified right, as long as whoever is doing so is of higher status. The character describes himself as, "puffed with Darwinian pieties(16)", which almost seems like it exonerates his actions. The poem goes on without any remorse or sadness when the woodchucks are being killed. Instead, there is a spiralling excitement woodchucks, poem, human, word, animal, world, war, two, people, animals, stanza, reader, powerful, jewish, gassing, first, character, behaviour, words, though, right, qualities, power, perhaps, one, obvious, obsessive, kumin, genocide, extermination, compulsive, because, almost, actions, without