World War II began in 1939, the author of “Woodchucks” was born on June 6, 1925. Maxine Kumin experienced the war at a young age, which had an everlasting impact on her writing. “Woodchucks”, featured in Kumin’s 1992 collection Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief, illustrates Kumin’s adolescence in war. She uses the poem to see through the eyes of a Nazi. Kumin wrote “Woodchucks” when she was 47, meaning that she had experienced adulthood as a mature woman. She creates a scenario using a farmer and woodchucks to see the hostility in Nazi behavior.
During the war Nazis were convinced that Jewish people weakened the rest of the world, in the poem the woodchucks threatened Kumin’s food. The woodchucks would sneak into the garden and destroy her…show more content… In the beginning of the poem Kumin attempts to kill the woodchucks by gassing them to death, similar to how the Nazi’s would execute the Jewish people in the concentration camps. Kumin seems to justify her actions against the animals by emphasizing that “If only they’d all consented to die unseen / gassed underground the quiet Nazi way” (29-30). Kumin relates her initial way of executing the animals in a way that wouldn’t force her to watch the animals die. Similarly, Nazi’s would use the method for massive execution. If a Jewish person was to give a reason, invalid or not, to frustrate a Nazi, they would be killed on the spot. Kumin murdered the woodchucks because they had been eating her food. Nazis and Kumin both killed those who intended no harm on their murderers. Kumin takes pleasure in killing the animals who were simply trying to survive. In her own words, executing them felt “righteously thrilling” (13). Although Nazis were forced to commit their crimes, some took pleasure from taking the lives of the Jewish people. In both coincidences, the death of the innocent can be justified by the
