Woodchucks Poem Essay

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.

In “A Barred Owl,” Wilbur adopts a playful tone through rhyming: “We tell the wakened child that all she heard/ Was an odd question from a forest bird” (3, 4). The rhyme imitates the style of nursery rhymes, creating a joking tone. The playful tone avoids seriousness and weakens the horror of the owl, which contributes to the poem’s style like a nursery rhyme. Wilbur also euphemizes the owl to help create a nursery style. He does not represent the horrible creature of an owl as a carnivore with sharp claws that hunts during the night, but euphemizes it as a “forest bird” (Wilbur 4). The owl’s representation as a safe forest bird refers its figure to the enthusiastic birds with heavenly sounds in cartoons and story books, which often help the protagonist to overcome difficulties and dangers. Referring to nursery imageries of birds, the euphemism contributes to the poem’s style as a nursery rhyme. Creating a playful tone and a nursery style, Wilbur uses rhymes and euphemism to “domesticate fear” (Wilbur

In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel depicts the steady escalation of dehumanization to which the Nazis subjected the Jews during the Holocaust and how it helped the Nazis crush the Jews’ spirits and justify their persecution and eventual genocide. Before the arrival of German soldiers, Wiesel and the other Jews of Sighet live in relative harmony with their Christian neighbors. But once the Nazis arrive, they steadily remove the Jews’ human rights until their fellow citizens no longer view them as human anymore. Thus, there is little action taken by the non-Jewish residents of Sighet when the persecutions and deportations begin. Additionally, the gradual pace of the dehumanization managed to convince the Jews that nothing significant was happening and that this was just a temporary phase that would soon pass. This could not be further from the truth. Once the Nazis finally issue the order to deport the Jews of Sighet, Wiesel notices that his neighbors’ spirits have been completely crushed: “There they went, defeated, their bundles, their lives in tow, having left behind their homes, their childhood. They passed me by, like beaten dogs, with never a glance in my direction. They must have envied me” (Wiesel 17). Wiesel describes his fellow Jews as downtrodden and defeated since they are now completely subject to the Nazi officers. The Nazis have stripped their rights, driven them from their homes, and treated them like animals. Being called and treated like animals, specifically

The speaker states “Smokey the Bear heads / into the autumn woods / with a red can of gasoline / and a box of wooden matches,” and immediately presents some irony to convey a deeper level of interpretation (1-4). The emblematic mascot, Smokey the Bear, normally known for promoting campfire safety is shown in an ironic light; after relentlessly reminding people about the dangers of forest fires to no avail, he grabs materials needed to start a fire and foreshadows that he will ignite a forest fire. Furthermore, saying that “his ranger’s hat is cocked / at a disturbing angle” the speaker depicts a sarcastic and peculiar tone to the poem (5-6). The speaker also states that Smokey “is sick of dispensing / warnings to the careless, / the half-wit camper, / the dumbbell hiker” to suggest that society and its people are the antagonists of the poem (12-15). The frustrated bear is fed up with the fact that people fail to acknowledge his warnings about maintaining the well-being of the forest, and thus “shows them / how a professional does it” and starts a fire himself (16-17). In reality, Collins is expressing his exasperation with the members of society who, although are given a superfluous amount of warnings of the destruction they can cause in the environment, continue to act like “half-wits” and “dumbbells”. In this version of Smokey the Bear, Collins’ allows Smokey to show the uneducated masses the true repercussions their actions can have. Overall, Collins’ use of vivid imagery and ironic humor in the poem present a much more abstract meaning. Through using these literary devices, Collins demonstrates a sarcastic outcome to the effects of not helping protect the

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

“Traveling Through the Dark” and “Woodchucks” share the similarity that they are both written in the first person’s point of view to show the relationship. In the first poem, William Stafford considers himself as a driver who “travels through the dark” and sees a dying doe lying on the road (line 1). Similarly, in the second poem, Woodchucks also writes in the first point of view by considering himself as a gardener who suffers from the large amount of woodchucks.

She admits that the world is in fact more complicated and “difficult” than she made it seem to the child. ‘The world burns’ (l. 20) is a metaphor for the chaos and havoc in the world outside and the tone here might be interpreted as apologetic, with a tinge of bitterness. Preceding that line, they explain to the addressee that they are ‘right to smudge it that way’, meaning smudging the colours. This could either be an extension of the metaphor that the world is complicated and confusing, or the crayons become a symbol of the tools we as humans made to imitate the world around us. This poem repeatedly picks up the relationship between human beings and nature and the attempt of understanding the structures of this

     In the next four lines, the speaker goes on to express the isolation of the woods and on the winter solstice, or “the darkest evening of the year”. The speaker lays the responsibility of saying that it is strange to be her on his little horse who “must think it queer”. The speaker is in isolation in the growing dark, yet he stops and stays in the lonely woods. The line, “between the woods and frozen lake” gives a sense of being trapped and having no escape. He is ensnared between the ever growing foreboding of the woods and an icy expanse that could prove deadly. Also, throughout history, the winter solstice has been a night of superstitions, of fear and loathing. It seems strange that with all of this, the man still desires to be alone in a dark wood when he has a long way to travel yet before he gets home. In a way, the speaker is intentionally isolating himself from society.

Many people do not think until later of what they’ve done, which can be too late. This parallels the Holocaust as many soldiers carried out mass murders, without thinking of the consequences of their actions, and as a result, one of the saddest events in history occurred. This end result began with less violent acts of isolation. Nazi propaganda, the Nazis’ need for someone to blame, new laws, the increasing pressure as they prepared for wartime, and the obedience and terror that the Nazis instituted were key factors that played a part in the transition of the Nazis from persecuting Jews to killing them. This shift occurred with minor resistance because of the above factors. The failure to resist against the Holocaust, and even the fact that people would want to exterminate an innocent minority, sends the world an important message. If we’re not careful, if we don’t fix our ways, and learn never to discriminate against a minority in such a violent way, we could end up repeating

The forest represents a wild, evil world and the humble abode of the devil. The devil tries to lure Goodman deeper into the forest. He cries out “Too far, too far!...My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him.” The trees in the forest symbolize sin and are hiding spots for those haunting Goodman. The woods take on a life of their own, especially when the serpent on the staff appears to wriggle. The forest is peppered with frightful sounds, howling beasts, and creaking trees. Nature was mocking and laughing at Goodman.

This help creates this image of the two walking together in this forest that the speaker describes. In the last two lines of this stanza, “towards the cave where you must descend” and “towards your worst fear”, the speaker gives the vision that walking with the subject towards fear, indicate that the speaker is just more than a need of please, but a feeling of love. The speaker claims that her subject “must descend” towards their “worst fear,” but the speaker is willing to accompany, displaying genuine affection. The third stanza tone is the amplification of the first and second stanza. Words like “small white flower,” “protect you,” carefully,” “flame,” “two cupped hands,” and “beside me,” is a tone compassion and love.

The climax of the poem,“He left it dead, and with its head/He went galumphing back” (19-20), glorifies the violence that ensues while the kid battles the Jabberwocky. Children will not understand this, but adults are mature enough to do. The irking matter in the story is the reason the kid decides to slay the monster. There is not one. The second stanza “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!... The frumious Bandersnatch” (4-8) depicts the father telling his son about the dangerous and monstrous Jabberwocky. Accordingly, the son instinctively turns to violence after hearing of the father’s story in the following line “He took his vorpal sword in hand” (9). He looks at the Jabberwocky as the enemy, and to display his masculinity to his father, he sets out to kill it. Furthermore, Carroll adds a man versus nature perspective with the hero purging the Jabberwocky, or nature, from society. Linking the man versus nature perspective with the son trying to present his masculinity to his father, any adult can see it is much more than just a good versus evil battle. There are underlying themes beneath the “whimsical” words. Adults look at the Jabberwocky analytically, fully utilizing Carroll’s leave for

In Art Spiegelman’s biographical graphic novel Maus 1: My Father Bleeds History, ethnic groups are portrayed as animals to allow the audience to understand the history behind the discrimination of Jewish people during World War Two, and the reasons behind the holocaust; Spiegelman utilizes this comparison to provide a better understand the mindset of the Germans, Jews, and Poles as the genocide began to unfold. Overall, Maus 1 focuses on the story of Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, who lived through the horror that was the holocaust, and his experiences as he tried to survive in Nazi occupied Poland. Therefore, the reason why Spiegelman portrays Germans as cats, Jews as mice, and Poles as pigs is to express how these groups viewed each other and to provide an understanding into the hostility behind anti-Semitism. As well, by using animals as an analogy, Spiegelman ensures that by creating an inhuman feel, the events could be looked at through a critical lens. Due to the relevance behind Maus, many articles were written, analysing the work. The article “Rhetoric Functions of the Infestation Metaphor in Hitler’s Rhetoric” by Steven Perry, provides insight into the origins of the depiction of Jews as rats or mice, and how it led to anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. Likewise, Sheng-Mei Ma’s article “Mourning with the (as a) Jew: Metaphor, Ethnicity, and the Holocaust in Art Spiegelman’s Maus,” and “Well Intended Liberals Slop: Allegories of Race in Spiegelman’s Maus” by Andrew Loman

Carol opens his poem with nonsensical descriptions and a father telling his boy to “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!” (5) with its “jaws that bite, the claws that catch!” (6). Though the poem is short, it clearly tells a story of a beast that terrorizes and people that fear it. The Jabberwocky is a vicious monster, and it is mentioned that “long time the manxome foe he sought“ (10) which could be implying that it has been around for ages. It is easy to read this poem, because it is utter nonsense without complex meaning or deep truths. Many of the words used in the poem were made