The poem “Groundhogs” by Maxine Kumin is about a person who sees himself as a peaceful farmer and how he becomes the opposite of what he was. He is desensitized to the point that he can justify to himself a mass extermination of an entire population of marmots, but the writer seems to imply that this is a flaw in humans. The flaw with human beings is that you can get so used to violence that you start to desensitize them to violence. It shows the effect that hatred and evil can have on the soul of a human being and how this can change their behavior. The poem begins with man having a general prejudice against one population, the marmots, which eventually evolves into a personal vendetta to kill the entire species. Kumin uses various literary devices throughout his poetry to demonstrate this point. The main literary devices used to demonstrate the point of the poem are allusion, symbolism, point of view, characterization, and alliteration. Kumin seems to use an allusion in this poem to make his point. The allusion Kumin tries to convey is Hitler and the Holocaust. The poem is about a person, the farmer, who one might see if he were a portrait of Hitler. The poem is about the annihilation of marmots. This is similar to Hitler's desire to eliminate all Jews. There is talk of them hiding from the farmer. Many Jews hid, fled, and ultimately survived the Holocaust. The poem describes how the people who killed millions and millions of innocent people came to a state of such hatred towards another race. Hitler began as a movement. He and the German people did not gas and immediately killed the Jews. They were frustrated with them at first. They stopped buying things and relating to them. They put them in one position and the N......in the center of the card......has the human race. It shows how one's behavior can change while obsessing over getting rid of an annoyance. The prejudice that the farmer has towards marmots becomes personal. We as human beings will always have the opportunity to see it and, if we are not careful, experience it personally. Kumin uses various literary devices throughout his poetry to demonstrate this point. The main literary devices used to demonstrate the point of the poem are allusion, symbolism, point of view, characterization, and alliteration. This is a part of humanity that is seen throughout history. One can only hope that, just like the Jews, the others will not consent to being gassed in silence and will just leave. It may have been the quiet Nazi style, however one can only hope that poems like this can keep in mind the possible nature of man if we are not careful to be loud and notice the injustices..