On a literal level, Maxine Kumin is telling a story about killing woodchucks in her, appropriately named poem, "Woodchucks." But, like many other works of literature, there is a much deeper, darker undertone in this poem. Through her change in diction and use of adaptive details, Kumin reveals the tragic transformation of the rodent exterminating narrator.
From beginning to end, diction is used to illustrate a certain form of corruption taking place within the narrator. In the beginning, the narrator wants to eradicate her pests in the most humane way possible, describing her first attempt at extermination as "merciful" and "quick." This humanitarian view on the extermination soon turns to a "righteously thrilling" hunt for the woodchucks. The narrator loses respect for the mammal in a short ten minutes, after shooting the little woodchuck, she watches him die in the rose garden. She is very short in her description of its death because she is somewhat embarrassed of the fact that she actually pulled the trigger and shot an innocent creature. In fact, she will not even admit that she killed it. She only says she aimed at his face, and then proceeds to say he died. Then, "Ten minutes later," she says she "dropped the mother" and continues to describe how the beast struggled for life. There is no sense of shame in this description; there is no hiding from the fact that she killed the woodchuck; there is only a false sense of pride in herself for finally figuring out how to exterminate her pests.
Kumin utilizes adaptive details to demonstrate the narrator's loss of innocence throughout the poem. The narrator realizes this change in herself, describing herself as "a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing." No matter how bad she wants to let the woodchucks roam freely, she can't. They are a threat to her well-being, and it's survival of the fittest.
