Richard Eberhart’s poem, “The Groundhog,” illustrates a common experience in which the speaker encounters a decaying animal to depict a profound, yet simple truth: all beings must succumb to mortality and mutability. While “The Groundhog” does not appear in stanzas Eberhart uses stages of emotional progression to depict the speaker’s initial reaction consisting of shock and rage to his final realization and understanding of death. Throughout the first 25 lines, the speaker and his emaciated heart appear to be in a state of shock, unable to understand or comprehend how this miniscule experience could have such truth behind it. The speaker’s emotions are running high after he begins to examine the dead animal; there is a certain longing to …show more content…
The speaker now realizes that even the richest and most noble people on earth will be one with the poorest and the untouchables. Great empires like “China and Greece” (45) crumble; “Alexander,” (46) “Montaigne,” (47) and “Saint Theresa,” (48) all experience the moment when they must surrender to death’s tightening grip. Nothing endures in life except mutability; the most powerful people will be placed in the same earth as the weakest. Though he still carries a “withered heart,” (44) the speaker now grasps the ultimate truth: all humans leave the world as they entered it, and only mutability prevails in life. Eberhart uses stages of progression, from the speaker’s initial response of shock and fury to understanding, by organizing the poem chronologically in order for full emotional …show more content…
Eberhart’s use of language creates a shift in tone from the very first line all the way to the last in order to produce emotional progression throughout the poem. The groundhog's "senseless change" (6) exemplifies the irrational but undeniable force of nature as it invades the earth; the speaker’s returning visits personify the change in the groundhog state of being. In the speaker’s four visits the groundhog changes from a "seething cauldron" (10), then to a "bony sodden hulk", (28) and finally to "only a little hair" (36). This dead creature depicts a symbol of mutability through its stench and repulsive appearance, but with a "strange love" (11), the speaker demonstrates how everyone—animals and people are unified. Eberhart has the speaker confront the challenge of mutability and the process of change that involves decay and death. This rotten groundhog has died and been placed back into earth just like great figures before us. Eberhart not only has the speaker understand that all humans must experience mortality, it has the reader examine how even a lowly groundhog can go through a similar experience that Alexander the Great of Saint Theresa went through so many years ago. “The Groundhog” contrasts life and death in nature, emotions and intellect, and the "withering heart," (44) a renewed