Maxine Kumin Woodchucks

In this passage from Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv puts a strong emphasis on the increasingly distant relationship between people and nature. Louv uses specific examples to support his argument, as well as imagery, sarcasm and an appeal to ethos and pathos. By using these rhetorical strategies, Louv appeals to his readers and convinces them of his argument.

In everyday society cruelty is faced, weather yet another person is arrested for the killing of and innocent animal, or even the seemingly never ending brutality of the police forces going viral on YouTube yet again. Of course we have the do not touch subjects, such as war. The constant debate over is killing innocent people okay, just because it’s war. Jack London really brings this point alive in his short story “War”. In this thought-provoking piece of literature the odd uses of characterization, symbolism, morals, and irony lead a reader to an overall statement of theme that simply war is cruel.

From beginning to end, the poem utilizes specific wording to illustrate a certain form of desensitization taking place within the narrator. In the beginning, the narrator wants to eradicate her pests in the most humane way possible, describing her first attempt at extermination as “merciful” and “quick.” This humanitarian view on the extermination soon turns to a “righteously thrilling” hunt for the woodchucks. After shooting the little woodchuck, she watches him die in the rose garden and she is very brief in her description of its death because she is somewhat embarrassed of the fact that she actually pulls the trigger and shoots an innocent creature. In fact,

She admits that a “lapsed pacifist” such as herself can be filled with “Darwinian pieties” to murder, specifically referencing the woodchucks destroying the landscape. Though the narrator may seem to simply realize her obsession with killing the woodchucks, her overall connotation leads readers to consider the possibility of a preoccupation to execute humans as well. This theme continues throughout the remaining stanzas in the poem, as the speaker utilizes phrases such as “the murderer inside me” and “if only they’d consented to die unseen.” These lines insinuate that the speaker represents one who murders people rather than a hunter of rodents. The use of violent, personified vocabulary throughout the entire poem also signifies the speaker’s focus on human violence. The strand of harsh and sometimes humanized words such as “beheading,” “gassing,” “nipping,” “killing,” and “bullets” inflict a negative connotation for the narrator’s actions. These words are not always used when referring to the woodchucks; the “beheading” refers to a patch of carrots, which signifies that this violent connotation is intentional. If the speaker simply aims to reflect an innocent woodchuck hunt, she should not use such violent or personal vocabulary. Therefore, the incorporation of this strand of words along with the narrator’s description of her own actions signifies the overall personification of the rodents in the speaker’s

Carson instills fear among her audience at the farmer's lack of emotion towards bloodshed, leaving the reader to question who is to blame. Sparking the reader's interest, Carson introduces an authority, who she describes as having a direct affiliation with the farmers who were, "persuaded of the merits of killing by poison" (paragraph 2). The farmers are misinformed and act without reason, only following what was told to them. The violence against blackbirds provides benefits or "merits" of death that outweigh moral reasoning and the consequences of using "poison". The war between an unknown authority and animals is a one sided one, which involves exterminating the helpless and the innocent with a substance that has deadly effects. Acting on orders, without emotion, farmers made the fatal decision and, "they sent in the planes on their mission of death" (paragraph 2). Carson uses the term "mission of death" to symbolize the authorities sending in soldiers in a war who are ordered to kill anything in sight. Comparing a war to the farmer's actions brings memories of blood, fear, and endless suffering to the reader. Carson relates to the reader's experiences of war and uses the negative associations to connect it the farmers. Armed with planes, the farmer's "mission of death" resulted in the "deaths of over 65,000 victims of blackbirds and starlings". Carson writes that "casualties most likely gratified the farmers", that the deaths were the spoils of war.

O’Flaherty uses dramatic irony of a sniper unknowingly killing his brother to show that war makes one a heartless killer, which emphasizes the effect that war can have on a person. After an intense sniper duel, the sniper sprinted with adrenaline flowing through his veins, right before checking the body: “wondered did he know him” and “Perhaps he had been in his own company before the split in the army” (O’Flaherty

On a literal level, Maxine Kumin is telling a story about killing woodchucks in her, appropriately named poem, “Woodchucks.” But, like many other works of literature, there is a much deeper, darker undertone in this poem. Through her change in diction and use of adaptive details, Kumin reveals the tragic transformation of the rodent exterminating narrator.

In Woodchucks, the animals are simply used as an allegorical device to further the idea that humans are quick to be injure and kill the weak for minute reasons. Traveling, however, focuses on the relationship between nature and humans, and the price of saving humans’ lives. The speaker in Woodchucks is not driven by the greater good for humanity, but is driven by the “Darwinian pieties for killing”. The speaker in Traveling acts because animals in the road “might make more dead”. He hesitates because he understands the importance of the unborn fawn’s life, but the Woodchucks speaker doesn’t hesitate to shoot the youngest woodchuck “down in the everbearing roses”. However, the Woodchucks speaker villainizes himself for killing the innocent, whereas Traveling simply reiterates how the speaker “thought hard for us all”, causing both themes to be respectively

Maxine Kumin's "Woodchucks" is a powerful and thought-provoking piece of literature that goes beyond the surface-level story of a gardener attempting to rid their garden of pesky animals. Through the lens of a German soldier during the Holocaust, Kumin offers a unique perspective on how Germans viewed their actions during this dark period in history. The author skillfully employs different points of view, a deceptive theme, and metaphors to create a rich and complex narrative that will leave readers with much to contemplate. A little background, Maxine Kumin is a renowned poet with a keen eye for detail. Having completed her education at Radcliffe College before starting a family, she delved into the world of poetry with a deep understanding of the human

Cormac McCarthy is a man who holds few interviews. Even today, he is known as one of the world’s greatest, most prolific authors though most of his personal opinions are left unreported. In a rare interview with a New York Times journalist, McCarthy says the philosophical words: “There's no such thing as life without bloodshed” completely revealing the coveted theme of his novel, All the Pretty Horses. Considering the amount of violence that manifests itself in the book; Blevins’ murder, the prison fight, and the gunfight between John Grady and the ranch workers; all of which results from Grady’s pursuit of a peaceful life, the theme McCarthy wished to broadcast, a theme of inescapable violence, was true in its delivery.

In Ambrose Bierce’s short story “Chickamauga,” he utilizes juxtaposing imagery to show the true horrors of war from a child’s naive and innocent view of battle contrasted to adults’ realistic point of view. As the child was playing war in the forest, wielding his wooden sword, he was “confronted with a new and...formidable enemy,” a rabbit, with “long menacing ears.” The child facing a harmless enemy like the rabbit creates an innocent and playful scene in readers’ minds as he plays his game. Readers have the impression that war is nothing but an exciting child’s game. His exploration was interrupted as men “crept upon their hands and knees” towards the creek, “[using] their hands only, dragging their legs.”

The author of “Chickamauga,” Ambrose Bierce, created this short story as a naturalist visualization of the devastating effects that wars and battles had on the soldiers which fought in them. The short story “Chickamauga” is defined as naturalist literature because of the author’s employment of specific literary techniques which define naturalism, such as the way the author gradually darkens the mood of the storyline as it progresses, the amount of description and attention paid to grisly and macabre details that shed wars in a whole new light, as well as the unfolding nature of the main character as the story

When it comes to killing there is always two points of view the peacekeeper that would not even kill a fly and the one that after his first kill finds pleasure in it. In both “Traveling through the Dark” and “Woodchucks” the speaker use imagery and diction to reveal their attitudes toward killing and to convey the central theme.

Where the Wild Things Are, a children’s book written by Maurice Sendak, is not only directed to young children, but has an underlying message that is intended for older generations to receive. This message, only used to enhance the meaning of the story, describes the addiction for one to have power and be in control. As the story goes on, the realization sets in that maybe the desire for power is not the best, at all times. The use of oppression becomes evident in this story, through Max, the main character, as he strives to control everything around him. Maurice Sendak uses repetition and parallelism in the imagery and text of Where the Wild Things Are to show Max’s progression to assume power and eventually discard it.

(1). The reader can see from this that the author is using pathos and loaded words to make them sympathize with the mistreated animals.