The Buck Poem In Witness, By Karen Hesse

The buck poem in Witness by Karen Hesse is about a buck who repeatedly gets stuck in the ice. Merlin Van Tornhout finds a buck trapped between the ice on a river that dogs chased it into. The buck had tried crossing but fell between the ice and got stuck. Constable Johnson comes and together, Merlin and him pull the huge buck out. Unfortunately, the cold buck gets scared and jumps right back into the hole it was just pulled out of. Merlin and Constable Johnson take it out, and this time the buck leaves, stopping for one moment to look back and snort before running into the woods. Merlin says that the snort echoed all over. That whole scene is a great metaphor for everything happening in Vermont at the time.

The book
After a while, most people who were pulled in learned what they were doing was actually wrong. Merlin Van Tornhout realized this and stopped following the Klan.“If I'd done what the klan sent me out to do/I'd be in jail a long time. But I didn't. I couldn't” (Hesse 150) After he came to his senses about what he was doing, he stopped himself and ran away. Harvey Pettibone was also someone in the story who joined the klan, made lots of mistakes, but then fixed things later. “...Viola remembers/why she fell in love with the great mule of a man in the first place/and all he's done lately to make things right…”(Hesse 157) Harvey managed to save his marriage as well as make things right before it was too late. Johnny Reeves is a completely different story. A terrible man in general, he too made terrible mistakes over and over again and joining the KKK didn't help the preacher’s case. When he finally tried to change, he was too deep in to get out. Only then did he become scared and realize the power of the Ku Klux Klan. “...Johnny Reeves looked at him/said/ I'm afraid of the Klan/and then he jumped/just like that.” (Hesse 140) The power of the Klan was too much for Johnny to handle and he believed the only way to escape it was