Poem Analysis
Shaphon Munshi
The Child Who Walks Backward
The text that I will be analyzing is a poem by Lorna Crozier called The Child Who Walks Backwards. Throughout my analysis I will look into parental abuse, underlying meanings in the lines in the poetry, as well as connections I can make personally to the book. I think it is also important that I bring forth essential messages in the words and statements of the poem. The main theme I will choose to focus on is that abuse does not only happen at school or back alleys, but that it happens in homes as well.
This poem is told from the perspective of someone on the outside of the abuse, specifically the neighbor to the mother and child. The poem goes on to tell you about how the mother claims that her young boy is allegedly running into things and having night terrors that cause these marks and injuries that appear on her son. As the poem goes on I believe that the description of the abuse increases from a level of bruises to broken bones to actual burning of the skin. It is quiet obvious that the neighbor knows better to believe that the boy is the one making these injuries occur, it is bluntly clear that neighbor is aware of the abuse in the statement “the child who climbed my maple with the sureness of a cat, trips in his room, cracks his skull on the bedpost, smacks his cheek on the floor.”.
I am very fortunate to not of had to experience the terrors of child abuse but I am able to personally connect to this piece of poetry through a child I knew. I attended junior high with an individual who would constantly show up to school with injuries that he always had a story to back up how it occurred, at the time I never thought much of it being as I wasn’t close with him but now that I think about it abuse at home may have been a possibility to his constant injuries. Now that I look back on the situation a lot of the stories didn’t really match up to the bruises or the way he would get nervous when we would ask him
The Child Who Walks Backward
The text that I will be analyzing is a poem by Lorna Crozier called The Child Who Walks Backwards. Throughout my analysis I will look into parental abuse, underlying meanings in the lines in the poetry, as well as connections I can make personally to the book. I think it is also important that I bring forth essential messages in the words and statements of the poem. The main theme I will choose to focus on is that abuse does not only happen at school or back alleys, but that it happens in homes as well.
This poem is told from the perspective of someone on the outside of the abuse, specifically the neighbor to the mother and child. The poem goes on to tell you about how the mother claims that her young boy is allegedly running into things and having night terrors that cause these marks and injuries that appear on her son. As the poem goes on I believe that the description of the abuse increases from a level of bruises to broken bones to actual burning of the skin. It is quiet obvious that the neighbor knows better to believe that the boy is the one making these injuries occur, it is bluntly clear that neighbor is aware of the abuse in the statement “the child who climbed my maple with the sureness of a cat, trips in his room, cracks his skull on the bedpost, smacks his cheek on the floor.”.
I am very fortunate to not of had to experience the terrors of child abuse but I am able to personally connect to this piece of poetry through a child I knew. I attended junior high with an individual who would constantly show up to school with injuries that he always had a story to back up how it occurred, at the time I never thought much of it being as I wasn’t close with him but now that I think about it abuse at home may have been a possibility to his constant injuries. Now that I look back on the situation a lot of the stories didn’t really match up to the bruises or the way he would get nervous when we would ask him