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The Victims

In the poem, the poet addresses the issue of broken families were the Father neglects the family due to their jobs. The question however, is who the real victim in the scenario is? Initially, the poet writes about her experiences as a child and she expressed the frustration and angst that one experiences as the “child” in a broken family. However, in the second half of the poem, she presents the other view of the “father” in the broken family, and how they too were victims. This poem primarily addresses how everyone is actually a victim in a broken family. The poet also addresses the emotions that each party have and the pain that they all go through. She depicts her frustration as a child and her satisfaction of justice supposedly being served when her father’s fortunes turned. Yet, she provides as a glimpse into the life of the father and how they too suffered.

The poet shows us her frustration with her father as a child by describing the glee she took in her father’s sufferings, seeing it as justice. When the parents had a “divorce”, she and the others (presumably siblings) were “glad”. When the mother “kicked [him] out”, they “loved it”. When he was “fired”, they “grinned inside”. “We pricked with her for your annihilation”. We can see the amount of suffering dwelt onto the children by the father must have been horrifically bad that they would believe their father deserved such misfortune and that they would rejoice over it. By writing about the gratification and satisfaction she took in her father’s sufferings, we can see how she is a victim of a malfunctioned family from the amount of hurt she harboured. This poem shows us how all this hurt accumulated over the years as a child was vented out in joy.

We also see how a broken family suffers due to the bitter mother poisoning her children’s mind against their father. In the poem, “she had taught [them] to take it, to hate [him] and take it”. The poet shows us the conflict that the child is involved in,...