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 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.