18 pages • 36 minutes read
Woodchucks
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Symbols & Motifs
The Woodchucks
In Kumin’s allegory, the woodchucks symbolize the Jewish people whom the Nazis murdered. While Kumin uses animals to mirror the Nazis’ dehumanization of Jewish people, Kumin also personifies—gives human characteristics to nonhuman things—the woodchucks so that readers are forced to reckon with their own prejudices at the end of the poem. According to Nazi propaganda, the Nazis viewed Jewish people as “animals” or “pests” who destroyed the German way of life. The Nazis believed that Jewish people “took over” (Line 11) Europe, which Nazis said meant the “case [they] had against them was airtight” (Line 4). The woodchucks hide in “a sub-sub-basement out of range” (Line 6), like many Jewish people did to escape the Nazis. Like the Jewish people, the woodchucks are decimated but not completely eliminated. Only in the final lines does the allegory become clear to the reader. By using symbols, Kumin circumvents the reader’s defenses so that the reader will consider how average people could become complicit in hate and genocide.
The Speaker
The speaker symbolizes the everyman. The poem gives no extensive identifying details outside of the speaker’s work in the garden. If the speaker could be anyone, this represents the idea that anyone could be capable of participating in violence. Without acknowledging the gruesome nature of the task, the speaker simply states that “[g]assing the woodchucks didn’t turn out right” (Line 1). Echoing the language of xenophobia, the speaker was “puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing” (Line 16). The speaker has been convinced of the rightness of these actions, as if it is an act of self-defense. Like average German citizens during Hitler’s time as chancellor of Germany, the speaker now finds Nazi policies understandable and even helps enact them. The speaker’s statement, “If only they’d all consented to die unseen / gassed underground the quiet Nazi way” (Lines 29-30), reflects the world’s indifference to the genocide for much of the war, as the concentration camps were not a driving force in US involvement.
The Garden
In Kumin’s allegory, the garden symbolizes a country. Like a country, the garden has artificial boundaries from other spaces. The speaker’s claim to this land is an abstract concept of ownership defined by the speaker. The speaker’s rejection of the woodchucks from the garden space mirrors the Nazi exclusion of Jewish people from German society. Like Nazi violence, the speaker’s murder of the woodchucks is based on larger societal values. Like the Nazis’ false claims about what Jewish people did to Germany, the speaker describes how the woodchucks “brought down” (Line 10) and “took over” (Line 11) the garden. Jewish people, like the woodchucks, needed to hide within their country, in “a sub-sub-basement out of range” (Line 6). These battles occur in the domestic setting of the speaker’s home garden. The garden shows how wars are not only fought on the battlefield but also at home and within its cultures.
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