In Maxine Kumin’s poem “Woodchucks”, the reader is led into a short tale of a woman whom is dealing with a family of woodchucks that are eating away at her garden. While this poem appears to be a simple tale following this woman’s methods to exterminating the pests, it rather is a poem that uses its speaker to stealthily showcase the potential that humans have for monstrous actions. The speaker, while appearing to be a sensible person turned deranged by the joyous feel of power and success, is a mere vessel to personify a hidden fiend lying within humans, in general.
Poems hold a different meaning from reader to reader, as to be expected, but if delved deep enough it can be easily deciphered that the speaker in Maxine Kumin’s “Woodchucks” is a much more complex part of this poem. While she is brought into the picture as a seemingly merciful person merely trying to save her crops from pests, she is quickly evolved into a killer that she, herself, doesn’t even expect to become.
The steps to which she builds up in brutality throughout the poem are slow and seemingly unimportant, but with the progression of her methods used against the woodchucks she is slowly unlocking something dark and cruel within her. This being the potential for cruelty that is explicitly mentioned in the latter half of the poem: “the murderer inside me rose up hard, / the hawkeye killer came on stage forthwith” (23-24). This line was a key element that played into revealing the true meaning of the poem, and into exposing the development of the speaker.
This is because it has revealed that with each kill she is feeling a sense of enjoyment that was not there previously, and it is this enjoyment that begs to be asked if this is something personal or universal in humans. The speaker was expertly described as a common person with the humane death of the woodchucks in mind to better showcase how this capacity to enjoy the kill is indeed universal, rather than simply personal to this one person. Through the progression of a person like most others, this speaker is capable of personifying the population as a whole into a much simpler sample.
While it is one thing to call out people and to accuse them of having the aptitude for such heinous actions, it is another thing to quietly sneak in to show how a simple gardener can be “puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing,” (16). In a way, it is narrowing the lens down to a singular person to show the simpler ways to which someone can release the inner demon within them without being aware of its presence. This simplified version then can be used as an example of the overall population because it has given the reader a viewpoint that is least to be expected to be an example of the capacity to be a murderer.
Her seemingly docile personality is the basis to showing how everyone, even those who are expected to be nothing less than kind, is plagued by this inner demon. While the speaker was written as a singular person, it was more blatantly shown to be a window towards questioning the entirety of the population of humanity in the final two lines of this poem. Maxine Kumin smoothly transitioned the speaker into a broader stance in these final lines: “If only they’d all consented to die unseen / gassed underground the quiet Nazi way” (29-30).
This was the final key into understanding the character behind the speaker because it was what finally broadened the focus from this fictional speaker and pulled it towards a sweeping view of the many ordinary people who took part in cruel acts as Nazis. This line brought along a crucial moment because it widened the lens and allowed this murderous urge to be seen in more than just this one woman. Instead, this reference to the Nazis made it clear that the speaker was, in reality, a vessel used to show how even the most ordinary of people have this inner fiend that can be awoken and escalated by the right circumstances.
In brief, this seemingly ordinary woman that is conjured up within the poem ‘Woodchucks” is, in actuality, not to be viewed as a single woman. Rather than a first peaceful gardener to whom is looking to mercifully end a threat to her crops, she is an example of the common person that is unaware of the inner fiend within them that holds the capacity to become a monster. The speaker is a mere mirage used to pass along the message that all people hold the potential to become something cruel and blood thirsty if said potential is awoken and built upon.
