Summary Of Woodchucks By Maxine Kumin

I read the book Woods Runner by Gary Paulsen. Woods Runner is about a 13 year old boy named Samuel whose parents get kidnapped in the Revolutionary War. His parents have been taken to New York City and Samuel has to go there to find them. He goes on the path to New York and meets unexpected allies.

"Children of the Forest" is a narrative written by Kevin Duffy. This book is a written testament of an anthropologist's everyday dealings with an African tribe by the name of the Mbuti Pygmies. My purpose in this paper is to inform the reader of Kevin Duffy's findings while in the Ituri rainforest. Kevin Duffy is one of the first and only scientists to have ever been in close contact with the Mbuti. If an Mbuti tribesman does not want to be found, they simply won't be. The forest in which the Mbuti reside in are simply too dense and dangerous for humans not familiar with the area to enter.

Maxine Kumin?s, Woodchucks provides an interesting and creative perspective into the mind state of those influenced by nazi warfare. What begins as a seemingly humorous cat and mouse hunt, reminiscent of such movie classics as Caddyshack, soon develops into an insatiable lust for blood. Kumin?s descriptive language provides the reader with the insight necessary to understand to the speaker?s psychology as they are driven beyond the boundaries of pacifism.

He died down in the everbearing roses.” This paints a picture of how the woodchucks face looked as he died in the bed of roses. Moving into the fourth stanza, the speaker creates another vivid picture of killing the mother when he says, “She flip flopped in the air and fell, her needle teeth still hooked in a leaf of early Swiss chard.” This imagery backs up the line in which the speaker realizes he’s in the wrong. “The murderer inside me rose up hard, the hawkeye killer came on stage forthwith.” Here, he realizes that no killing is justified and he is in the wrong.

The children are unnoticed by others and the mother is the only one that is protecting them. This poem shows the hard times that the mother must face because her children have died. However the mother is coping with them while still protecting her children after they have died, This is the mother's way of coping because she is not yet ready to let go of her children and still wants to care for them. This poem shows this through nature by portraying the mother as a bird who is protecting her nest. Also the poem uses nature by describing the harsh times as a winter wind that has caused harm to the mother and her children.

     In the fourth stanza, the speaker’s killing instinct has taken over her body. She shows no pity towards the woodchucks as she takes the mother woodchuck and shoots her, watching it fall to its helpless death. She then takes another baby woodchuck, looking in its eyes, and kills it. She continues to kill the rest like a trained assassin, or psycho killer driven by pure frustration.

The speaker also chooses her diction precisely, so that there is clear contribution to the overall idea that the poem is indeed about the quest for change and longing from escape from the swamp. Two very different forms of description are used to represent this source of dread: once by the simple name, swamp, and

In the beginning of the poem, the narrator states that “all night [she is] the doe,” (i, 1) while also being aware of the hunter’s presence. Despite this knowledge, she is “burning to meet him,” (i, 6) and is consequently greeted by a jacklight and “then slung like a sack in the back of his pickup.” (ii, 11-12) This portrays the narrator as a victim, an innocent creature. Enjambment foreshadows her impending fate when she “have

History has presented hunting as a job and pastime for men for thousands of years. Ancient civilization’s livelihoods rested on the hunting and gathering that men performed for a tribe while the women stayed back to care for the young and cook. It truly is a tale as old as time; however, over time, a very long time, women have found their way into this historically male dominated arena. Women have begun partaking in the “sport” of pursuing animals more frequently than ever before. Despite this, though, females can still find themselves receiving criticism and wayward glances for stepping outside the traditional views of gender roles. In H. William Rice’s collection of short stories, The Lost Woods, the tale “Gobble, Gobble” offers a firsthand account from a young lady who seems to have decided to turn her back on society’s view of femininity to take on her own idea of what her role should be in her family.

One example of this is when Ellie was doing his death run. Now during the end of WW2, the Nazis chose to do death runs. Death Runs are long runs in whatever weather happening. If Jews stop even for the slightest second the Jews were shot on the spot. These death runs tested the mental and physical limits of the Jews. This relates to dehumanization because the Nazis treated the Jews horrible. A quote from the text to back this up is “ Faster, you tramps, you flea-ridden dogs.” (Wiesel,85). This show how the Nazis had no care for the Jews. Which overall really makes the Jews feel

“Faster, you tramps, you flea-ridden dogs!” (Wiesel 85). An SS officer yells at the Jews while they are being forced to run over forty miles of land. The officers treated these people as if they were animals and as if they meant nothing. The Jews were tossed and beaten as if they were sacks of flour. Dehumanization can be best defined as the process of depriving a person or group of positive human qualities. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, is forced to experience many forms of dehumanization throughout his book. Throughout Elie WIesel’s, Night, the SS officers dehumanization toward the Jews increases in severity and causes the Jews to lose their will to live as they travel to different locations.

When someone is face to face with atrocious acts and cruel treatments, any regular human being could transform into the meanest of brutes. The people who were tortured, abused, neglected, and or stripped of their very own dignity leading to self-preservation by any possible means necessary, even if it meant forgetting those who they love just to survive on their own terms. Because of this, there are people who also become desensitized towards brutality and inhumanity that occurs around them. In the Holocaust novel, “Night,” the young Elie Wiesel has succumb to a scarring fate; he has witnessed a countless amount of people being tortured, neglected, abused, and even killed, but he showed little emotion, he experienced many fleeting thoughts that raced through his head about how life for him would be a lot easier without his father dragging him down and he was relieved and felt freedom when

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

Kumin uses vivid imagery to describe the destruction that the woodchucks caused. “They brought down the marigolds as a matter of course” and “beheaded the carrots.” This introduces the speaker’s adversarial tone throughout the rest of the poem. She immediately seeks revenge on the woodchuck family. The author states that the speaker, at one point, was not a violent person. “I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing.” Now, the author shows the speaker’s “survival of the fittest” beliefs in order to express the ongoing adventure of killing the woodchucks. She shot the smallest woodchuck first and watched it fall into the roses. The author provides more imagery to describe the manner in which the mother woodchuck died. “She flip-flopped in the air and fell, her needle teeth still hooked in a leaf of early Swiss chard.” By doing this, it is easy to imagine the ball of fur tumbling through the air, dead. Kumin shows the speaker’s seek for vengeance when she begins to kill all of the woodchucks. “O one-two-three the murderer inside me rose up hard.” Here, the revenge that the speaker is in search of is noticed. The author puts into her poem that the last woodchuck is an “old wily fellow,” implying that he is clever and sneaky. The

Anna writes through poem that this act is unjust and should not happen to such a creature. Through the use of the poem she tries to tell the scientist “Beware, lest in the worm you crush, a brother's soul you find.” (Barbauld, l.35-36) Barbauld relates that killing a mouse is not morally different from taking the life of a fellow man. The poems theme is effective and pushes the reader to feel sorrow for the poor mouse. In “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns, the ongoing themes are guilt and fear. Burns knows what mice are up to, stealing his food from his crops and ruining his walls within his home to make homes of their own. Burns however, does not care because he himself feels guilty for the little mice. Burns feels like even though they may be a nuisance to some humans, the mice have no choice but to do these things to live to see another day. “I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve; What then? Poor beastie, thou maun live!” (Burns l.13-14) Burns explains why he is not bothered that the mice steal his food. Burns also has the theme of fear in his poem. The mice fear men, and for good reason, Burns is aware of this and makes minimal effort to scare the mice while they are at work. “An’ justifies that ill opinion which makes thee startle,” (Burns, l.9-10) Burns discusses how the fear mice have for men is due to the brutes who have no patience to understand what the mice go through. While the two poems have different themes, one