Woodchucks

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1972

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

While there is no consistent meter throughout the poem, the lines are similar in length, and all five stanzas have six lines. This form resembles a natural monologue. Along with the poem’s simple language, this creates an unassuming narrator, which supports the initially lighthearted tone in describing a domestic scene. The simple and unassuming form makes the poem’s final message all the more shocking.

The poem’s unusual rhyme scheme further underscores the forbidding and uneasy allegory that will be revealed fully in the poem’s closing lines. Each stanza has an ABCACB rhyme scheme, creating a halting pace with the unexpected inversion of the rhyme in the last two lines of each stanza. The rhyme foreshadows that something is not quite right about the topic of the poem.

Allegory

An allegory uses multiple interconnected symbols to create a hidden meaning that often reflects a moral truth or political message. Kumin’s allegory depends on three main symbols: the speaker, a gardener; the woodchucks; and the garden. These symbols represent various aspects of the Holocaust and World War II. Kumin’s choice of symbols matches the lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek tone of the beginning of the poem and contrasts the seriousness of the allegorical meaning that becomes apparent as the poem goes on. The domesticity of the poem’s subject matter highlights her argument that even the most typical and unassuming humans, such as the poem’s gardener, are capable of cruelty and violence, such as that of the Nazis and average people living during the Nazi regime against the Jews.

Dramatic Monologue

Kumin uses the dramatic monologue to underscore how anyone is capable of violence. A dramatic monologue is a poem written as if it were spoken by one character who then describes a narrative that reveals insight into the character’s mind. The speaker in “Woodchucks” is unremarkable. Nothing much is said about the identity of the speaker, other than that the speaker is a gardener in a rural area. This normalcy makes the speaker’s final confession more shocking and supports Kumin’s claim that all humans are capable of great violence.

Kumin also makes great use of pronouns in her dramatic monologue to support her themes. The poem initially uses the collective “we” (Line 4). This word reflects the effects of propaganda, suggesting that the speaker identifies as a part of a superior group that is positioned against others, grouped together as “them” (Line 4). These pronouns obscure the individual in the masses. Yet Kumin criticizes this thinking, and she uses the pronoun “I” (Lines 13, 15, 19, 27, 28) to hold each individual responsible for their own actions as the violence escalates.