Compare & Contrast Woodchucks and Traveling Through the Dark Essay

Max Kumins , Woodchucks provides an interesting and creative positioning Into the mind state of those influenced by Nazi warf ar. What begins as a seemingly Humorous cat and reversal hunt, soon develops into an insatiable lust for blood. However, locomotion through the Dark by William Stafford, presents an innocent soul garbled by the unawareness of man and the death of an unborn innocent. two Kumins and Staffords descriptive diction and overall story provides the reader with the insight necessary to understand to the verbalizers psychology as they are driven beyond the boundaries of pacifism and genocide. The poem Woodchucks indeed has a rhyme scheme, yet doesnt conform to conventional forms of rhyme , each stanza seems to come up the order of A, B, C, A, C, B, which may not be ostensible to the reader at scratch line, but doesnt hinder the poems effectiveness. The first stanza begins with the speaker describing their failed set kayoed at eliminating the pests.The first attempt was described as merciful The Knockout bomb bone. However, the spare-time activity lines offer a bit of humor to the chase as it seems the woodchuck has outsmarted the speaker as a result of their overconfidence and the case we had against them was airtight, both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone, but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range. This first stanza sets the stage for what would appear to be a humorous battle of wits between the speaker and the woodchucks.While in Traveling through the Dark consist of no rhyme scheme, and follows a broody tone, that comes from the decision of life and death, which sets the moods of the poem include sadness, despair. The following stanza continues in this vein with the cynical statement, Next morning they turned up again, no worse for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch. However, those that follow are slowly indicative of the speakers mental deterioration.The statements o f the food being eaten by the woodchucks are filled with bitterness as the language begins to resemble that of a killer. They brought down the marigolds as a head of course and then took over the vegetable patch nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots. This is especially perspicuous in the reference to the carrots being beheaded which provides an appropriate transition into the next stanza. On the other overstep Staffords poem uses the use of nonliteral language, like alliteration, and imagery in order to bring in the put off emotions that come with being forced to make a life threatening decision.The poem by Stafford, Traveling through the Dark presents readers with an uncomfortable and rather grim instance of the intersection of the natural world and that of man. Technology, in this case cars and the man-made road, are seen as something invasive and harmful in this poem. In order to convey the meaning of the poem Traveling through the Dark by William Stafford uses a conversational style to come about the theme in the poem of the role of technology in modern life and , more importantly, the theme of man versus nature becomes apparent.Then again Kumin presents a sense of human air vs. animal behavior in a way that allows the symbolism of World War II to come through. Through out the poems, both poets not only convey an everyday scene into an underlying theme, by the use of figurative language and the selection of words and phrases. Common themes of the poems are life, death, and conflicting forces lie in each poem. Both poets allow for an underlying theme to be portrayed in a way that reflects on the real scene of the poem.