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Corruption In The Poem 'Woodchucks' By Maxine Kumin

Decent Essays

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. From beginning to end, diction is used to illustrate a certain form of corruption 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. The narrator loses respect for the mammal in a short ten minutes, after shooting the little woodchuck, she watches him die in the rose garden. She is very short in her description of its death because she is somewhat embarrassed of the fact that she actually pulled the trigger and shot an innocent creature. In fact, she will not even admit that she killed …show more content…

While most changes of this magnitude take place over long periods of time, this transformation happens over a few days at the most. This quick transition shows that even though the narrator may be upset with her changes, she didn’t try to stop them from happening. It was as if she had no limits on how far she would go to rid her garden of these pests. First it was a simple gassing, then cyanide, and finally shooting them. After it was all over, there was no true remorse, only pointing fingers at the very thing she was trying to kill. Which leads to the question, did she kill the woodchucks out of necessity in the beginning or did she start out simply wanting to kill for the thrill of

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