Woodchucks
Nehan Waseem
Poem
 Poems Title-Woodchucks
 Author-Maxine Kumin
 Paraphrase-The poem is about the authors
attempts to exterminate the woodchucks that
are destroying her garden.
Time Period and Style
 Time Period- Post Modernism (1950-Present)
 Style of Poem- Modernism
Theme and Purpose
 Theme- The theme of the poem is that there is a
killer in all of us and we can’t control it.
 Purpose- The purpose of the poem is to
illustrate how a person who is a pacifist gets
consumed by her inner killer, conveying that
we all have an evil side.
AP Prompt Essay
 Thesis- In the poem Woodchucks by Maxine Kumin, Kumin
reinforces the meaning that there is a killer inside every individual.
The tone of the poem is aggravated yet determined as Kumin is
infuriated with the woodchucks destroying her garden and is
determined to protect her garden.
 Topic Sentence 1- In the poem Woodchucks, Kumin reinforces her
meaning that there is a killer inside everyone by showing anyone
can become a killer.
 Topic Sentence 2- Maxine Kumins helps reinforce her statement
that there is a killer inside every human being is reinforced by
portraying woodchucks are inferior to humans.
Woodchucks By Maxine Kumin
Gassing the woodchucks didn't turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain
Exchange
was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone,
but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range.
Next morning they turned up again, no worse
for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes
and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch.
They brought down the marigolds as a matter of
course
and then took over the vegetable patch
nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the
carrots.
The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling
to the feel of the .22, the bullets' neat noses.
I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace
puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing,
now drew a bead on the little woodchuck's face.
He died down in the everbearing roses.
Ten minutes later I dropped the mother. She
flipflopped in the air and fell, her needle teeth
still hooked in a leaf of early Swiss chard.
Another baby next. O one-two-three
the murderer inside me rose up hard,
the hawkeye killer came on stage forthwith.
There's one chuck left. Old wily fellow, he keeps
me cocked and ready day after day after day.
All night I hunt his humped-up form. I dream
I sight along the barrel in my sleep.
If only they'd all consented to die unseen
gassed underground the quiet Nazi way.
Secondary Source

Nazis and Woodchucks
Nazi racial ideology has baffled the cultured mind since the atrocities were first made
known to the world with the end of WWII. Though the inconceivable horror Jews and
other nationalities endured under Nazi reign is common knowledge in our culture and
is found in almost any modern history textbook, the mindset that made such atrocities
acceptable to Nazis under Hitler’s regime remains a mystery to many. Maxine Kumin
admirably conveys the thought process behind this oppressive outlook through the
seemingly simplistic poem “Woodchucks”. The purpose of the poem is to align the
readers with the narrator’s apparently reasonable yet somewhat sociopathic view of
the woodchucks as an inferior life form while building an allegory to the Nazi’s
justification for mass extermination that will shock the audience when made explicit
by the poem’s end.
Secondary Source

This poem tells the story of a woman who is trying to keep varmints from eating her
crops and potentially taking food from her and her family's table. The woman starts
by trying to gas the woodchucks but when that doesn't work she develops a blood
lust and does on a shooting rampage to end the lives of the woodchucks.
These last two lines stir a little controversy with readers. The line references to the
mass extermination of the Holocaust and some people find it a tasteless and
inappropriate way to end the poem. I agree that yes, it brings up startling images,
and yes it is a pretty harsh way to state the thought, however it gets the point across
vividly. This woman wanted these woodchucks dead. She would have much rather
have not seen them die, but they refused to succumb to the gas so she took matters
into her own hands. The reference to the Holocaust just emphasizes the fact that this
woman was pushed way past her breaking point with these woodchucks. She was no
longer thinking rationally and could only wish death upon these creatures. I believe
that during the Holocaust many Nazis were the same way, not thinking rationally. I
digress.
MLA Work Cited Page

"Poetry Blog Log." : "Woodchucks" by Maxine Kumin. Web. 22 Jan.
2015. <http://thomas-marion.blogspot.com/2011/10/woodchucksby-maxine-kumin.html>.

"Woodchucks by Maxine Kumin Analysis" StudyMode.com. 02
2013. 2013. 02 2013
<http://www.studymode.com/essays/Woodchucks-By-MaxineKumin-Analysis-1408943.html>.
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