THE CHILD WHO WALKS BACKWARDS TPCASTT
Title:
Our initial thought upon reading the title was that the poem would explore a child who suffers from a mental illness; hence they felt out of touch with reality and walking backwards portrayed their state of mind. An alternate theory was that the poem told a coming of age story that highlighted the child’s reluctance to grow up and embrace the harsh realities of life.
Paraphrase:
The poem begins with the narrator’s next door neighbour discussing her child’s clumsiness. She claims that he always seems to be running into ordinary items around the house such as cupboard corners and doorknobs. She adds onto this behaviour by explaining her child suffers from nightmares that jolt him awake and lead to him running through their hallways in fear. His alarmed state often causes him to accidentally plunge down their steep set of stairs.
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She wanted to create an atmosphere where we are suspecting and doubting the words of the mother. Whatever the mother says, the reader is to take the opposite of what is really happening into account. She exemplifies this through the use of repetition of the mother saying that the child walks backwards, and by the second time she repeats this phrase we are fully aware of the mother’s true intentions of abuse. Perhaps the poet intended to invoke emotions of anger and confusion from the reader as they have written the poem in a very raw, realistic way. The poet is attempting to extinguish the bystander effect amongst her readers by choosing a very solemn and tragic mood to place emphasis on the reality of child abuse that goes unreported due to people not questioning what they are hearing. The poet wants to prove a point to the reader that we must acknowledge the signs of child abuse and take action.
Reading the news, just to come across the sad story of a young child who injured his parents. The child was regularly abused, emotionally and physically, and badly injured the mother and father in attempt to get away. When reading this story, the child is not looked down upon, but instead pitied because of the poor lifestyle this child was provided with. The parents were injured, but are looked at with angry eyes, no pity involved. This effect, consisting of disregarding actions and placing the blame on another individual, is extremely evident in books of Robert Cormier.
While the mothers in neither Dobson’s nor Harwood’s poems are entirely content with the situations, they have found themselves in, they have ultimately chosen to make the necessary sacrifices because a mother’s love for her child is
It is the tragic truth that many children have to face abuse while growing up, this influences the kind of person they become. Kerry Kletter’s novel, The First Time She Drowned, displays several forms of abuse a child may experience, many of which prove to have lasting effects on the characters. Through research, it is proven how abuse can affect a child's development. Whether the abuse is physical, verbal or sexual it changes a person, impacting their life. Abuse creates trauma for a person making their lives harder and changing the way they view the world.
At this point, the mood turns from positive to sad and worrisome. “O, here’s the shoe my baby wore, / But, baby, where are you?” (Randall 31-32). With these last two lines of the poem, the reader is able to feel the agony and despair that the mother is in at the
" Since then, the boy carefully watched for his father's movement. When the parents or someone that the child lives with abuse them, they suddenly have to protect themselves from being abused by watching their actions or thinking about how to fight against the parents. In the other hands, children tend to grow up and act like their parents and they do the exact same thing that their parents used to do with them when they were a kid. Child abuse effects on a child's life greatly.
In her book, she explains to professionals and mothers on how to see and attend to children. Not only does she refer to some of her colleagues who have experienced and felt the sadness within the children’s voice, but also seen the causes and the positive and negative influence of neglect and abuse. The book is all about policies that help in the safeguard of children and also how the community can understand and relate to these kids. Finally, she explains the process of child protection and how treatment is to be administered to the affected
The poem Mother, Any Distance Greater Than a Single Span, written by Simon Armitage, is about a child and his relationship with his mother. Throughout the poem, we see their connection naturally develop and change. As the child gets older and becomes more independent he wants to leave the ‘birds nest’, yet the mother doesn’t want to fully let go. Armitage successfully uses the language features of symbolism, allusion, metaphor, and rhyme to influence me into feeling love, sadness, and hope towards the mother throughout the poem.
The figurative language’s goal was to pull the reader into the daycare as well as emphasizing the symbolism. Light is a major symbol throughout the poem because just as light has different attributes, so do children; it is repeated in lines 5, 7, 11, and 16. The simile in line 5 emphasizes the atmosphere of energy from children while in line 7 it shows how this energy can turn into chaos. This symbol for children is further developed in line 11 and line 16 when it shows how just children are full of warmth and curiosity. Another symbol throughout the poem is time and it’s passing.
This quote gives readers an insight to Sally’s life as she navigates abuse in her house and provides an idea how many kids make up lies about this abuse which can make it hard for them to receive help. “Next week she comes over black and blue and asks what she can do?” (Cisneros 53). This quote from Minerva gives us a better idea of domestic and partner abuse within life. We can also see how this abuse causes Minerva to be confused and uncertain about her relationship and this pain coming from a partner.
In the poem, “The Child Who Walks Backwards”, Lorna Crozier discusses the cover up of parental abuse in narrative style of poetry. Lorna Crozier expresses the point of view as if someone is observing the abuse from the outside, specifically the neighbor to the mother and child. The poem proclaims that the son of a mother constantly runs into things and sleep walks during the night which supposedly were the causes for the marks and injuries that appeared on the young boy. Upon closer analysis, it comes to realization that the child is the victim of abuse. Parental abuse is something that everyone should be wary about because a lot of parents abuse their children and force them to be silent about it.
The imagery had much light and childishness to it. With images such as “it seemed to Myop as she skipped lightly from her house to pigpen to smokehouse that the days had never been as beautiful as these”. As well as having lines such as “she felt light and good in the warm sun”, and “She struck out at random at chickens she liked” to create the feeling of child hood innocence, using all of this light to mean goodness and being unaffected by the harshness of reality. However she also uses the imagery later to show the loss of innocence when she describes everything as darker, when she starts using lines such as “it seemed gloomy in the little clove she found herself in” and “all his cloths had rotted away”. Alice walker is using this imagery to convey that the innocence has been lost at this point, taken by the harshness of reality and death.
The barrier between her and the neighbours after her husband’s death forced her to become reserved and quiet. Her and her son only went into town if they had to. They preferred to stay close to the garden where they felt safe. The death of the husband is the cause of the mothers’ complete change in character. The death let the audience connect with her on a deeper level to understand her pain and suffering.
In his poem “Behind Grandma’s House,” Gary Soto details the life and daily routine of a somewhat masochistic ten year old boy as he kicks over trash cans, terrorizes cats, and drowns ant colonies with his own urine. In many ways the boy acts as any other boy his age would be expected to, but he tends to go further than most young boys with his actions and descriptions of how he feels. This extra violence and destructive tendency the narrator exhibits can lead the reader to believe that, rather than being a typical child, he strongly craves attention due to his circumstances, and he is willing to act out and act obscenely in order to receive that attention. Throughout the poem the narrator details all the things he does to prove how tough he is, many
This shows what she had to endure to try to keep her baby healthy. It appeals to the loving protective side of the reader. It makes them think about what the baby must be going through beacuase of their economic situation. Rhetorical questions are used to directly engage the
In the poem, “My Papa’s Waltz”, Theodore Roethke illustrates the complex relationship between a little boy and his father by juxtaposing images of love and violence through word choices that portray feelings of fear yet affection for his father. Roethke’s shifting tone encompasses distress and a sense admiration that suggests the complexities of violence both physically and emotionally for the undercurrents of his father and son relationship. The poem begins with a series of negative images, each of which are considered violent and undesirable in a family. For example, “The whiskey on your breath” suggests alcoholism, and “Could make a small boy dizzy” emphasizes that a boy is suffering from the effects of the alcoholic parent.