Woodchucks vs. Traveling through the Dark

The only real similarity between these two poems, in my opinion, is that an animal dies; however, these poems are VERY different. The first poem, “Woodchucks” by Maxine Kumin, describes a woman’s intense yet comical pursuit to kill the woodchucks that are eating her garden. Unlike William Stafford’s poem, “Traveling through the Dark,” the narrator in “Woodchucks” has some sort of vendetta against the woodchucks and wants to kill them and even tries multiple ways to do so. The narrator in “Traveling through the Dark” describes “hesitation” very different to the confidence that the reader detects in “Woodchucks.” The dictation in the two poems is very different as well. In “Woodchucks,” Kumin uses allusions (such as Darwin and Nazis) to dramatize a simple task in order to create comedy. Whereas Stafford uses a somber tone and realistic tension when he discovers an unborn baby in the deer’s stomach. Although both of these poems are somewhat similar in subject matter, they are very different in motivation, dictation, and overall tone.