Compare & Contrast Woodchucks and Traveling Through the Dark Essay

Max Kumins , Woodchucks provides an interesting and creative perspective Into the mind defer of those influenced by Nazi warf are. What begins as a seemingly Humorous range and mouse hunt, soon develops into an insatiable lust for blood. However, Traveling by dint of the opprobrious by William Stafford, presents an innocent soul lost by the unawareness of piece and the death of an unborn innocent.Both Kumins and Staffords descriptive row and all overall piece of music provides the reader postingh the insight necessary to understand to the utterers psychology as they are driven beyond the boundaries of passivism and genocide. The verse Woodchucks indeed has a rhyme scheme, yet doesnt conform to conventional forms of rhyme , each stanza seems to follow the erect of A, B, C, A, C, B, which may not be apparent to the reader at kickoff, but doesnt thwart the songs effectiveness. The kickoff stanza begins with the speaker describing their failed attempt at eliminating th e pests.The first attempt was described as merciful The Knockout bomb swot up. However, the following 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 nerve we had against them was airtight, two 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 contemplative tone, that haps from the ending of life and death, which sets the moods of the poem include sadness, despair. The following stanza continues in this vein with the misanthropical statement, Next morning they turned up again, no worse for the nitrile than we for our cigarettes and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch. However, those that follow are easy indicative of the speakers mental deter ioration.The statements of 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 matter of course and then took over the vegetable patch nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots. This is especially distinct in the reference to the carrots being beheaded which provides an appropriate transition into the succeeding(a) stanza. On the other hand Staffords poem uses the use of poetic language, like alliteration, and imagery in order to convey the disheartening 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 risque instance of the intersection of the natural world and that of man. Technology, in this case cars and the unreal road, are seen as something invasive and harmful in this poem. In order to convey the meaning of the poem Traveling through the D ark by William Stafford uses a conversational style to communicate 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 sympathetic behavior vs. animal behavior in a way that allows the symbolic representation of World War II to come through. Through out the poems, both poets not only convey an everyday scene into an vestigial 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 original scene of the poem.