Comparison of Woodchucks and Traveling through the Dark

Both Woodchucks and Traveling through the Dark focus on animals. Mixine Kumin's Woodchucks' speaker is primarily concerned with the execution of animals while William Stafford's Traveling through the Dark's speaker is concerned with the salvation of animals. The speaker's tone in Woodchucks can be catagorized as aggressive and apathetic toward the killing of the woodchcks. The speaker's tone in Traveling through the Dark expresses a concerned tone toward the tragedy of the dead deer's unborn fawn. Furthermore, while these two poems express contrasting tones toward the execution of animals, they do have one similarity: each of the poems conveys the implication that animals are burdensome; the woodchucks destroy the vegetable patch, flowers, etc. and the dead deer acts as an obstacle in the middle of the narrow road.