In a court of law, the truth is only as valued as the stories lawyers spin for their clients. Along the way, events may be exaggerated, details may be undermined, but ultimately the case is left up to a jury who choose to identify with one of the perspectives. Caroline Smith’s poem entitled “The Teenager” constitutes as an affidavit, outlining the facts of a burglary case involving an adolescent. However, the vagueness Smith integrates through ambiguous pronouns and free indirect discourse encourages speculation on the identity of the abusive perpetrator as well as the extent of his misconduct. The poem opens in medias res of the teenager’s testimony as he recalls the mistreatment of a dog. Smith illustrates the offender “[dragging the dog] across the floor, / its claws out in resistance” (Smith 3-4) in order to victimize the hound. With its flaws flailing in protest, the animal is clearly unhappy with the offender’s actions. Even the appearance of the dog with “fur hooding its eyes” frames it as a vulnerable creature whose mop of hair obscures its vision—a fragile barrier from witnessing the horrors of the world (Smith 5). The description becomes violent as the the offender “shook and twisted / the folds of [the dog’s] neck” (Smith 7-8) implying strangulation. Arguably the most vivid description of abuse in the poem, Smith leaves …show more content…
the fate of the dog uncertain. Afterward, there is a notable shift in the poem denoted by Smith’s punctuation and the strangely placed utterance of “The dream of his father!” thereby introducing another character to the story (Smith 9). Smith makes things confusing from here on out as the pronoun ‘he’, which was originally presumed to belong to the teenager, now also refers to the father. Initially, the pronouns are still distinguishable and Smith tells us of the teenager’s backstory. The teenager’s mother brought the teenager to unite with his father, but unfortunately the father was abusive and beat the mother. It was interesting that Smith made the mother mute, which parallels the dog described in the first passage, incapable of speech. The poem returns to the courthouse where we learn of the teenager’s sentence. As Smith published “The Teenager” in her anthology entitled The Immigration Handbook, it makes sense that the boy’s punishment for his crime is deportation. The purpose of the free indirect discourse is to mix some intimacy with the teenager’s perspective into the narrative of the third person speaker. For instance, the lines “he hated this shit-hole of a country / as much as it hated him.” extrapolate from the teenager’s consciousness and generate either sympathy for the misunderstood disposition or antipathy for the crassness of the teenager (Smith 20-21). The final passage has an attitude of resignation and despondency as Smith employs parallelism as the jury delivers their sentence of the teenager.
The back and forth of “he did this so they (the jury) conclude this” emphasize how little control the teenager has in his fate, much like the dog. Ironically, the dog is brought up again as the teenager brashly proclaims that “he was glad/ he'd hurt the dog / so they said he had no remorse” (Smith 31-33). Likely attempt to use denial to bury his feelings, the teenager isn’t particularly well-equipped to deal with feelings of guilt and remorse and as such passively accepts his fate as a
deportee. Cohesively, Smith’s poem deliberately employs periphrasis to avoid describing a single abuse. Without stark imagery forcibly evoking sympathy, the aversion towards describing the abuse the teenager suffered encourages readers to read closer. Upon a brief skim, one would conclude that the teenager committed a burglary and hurt a dog. However, with enough examination into the confusing pronouns, the narrative of abuse becomes clearer. Smith is illuminating a cycle of abuse from father to son on their mother to dog. That being said, several of the pronouns from the beginning could refer to the father instead of the teenager and the poem would still retain its meaning with the father leaving the child. Smith likely intended for all this information to blur together until no one can tell whose fault it really is. That is up to the imagination.
In Stevie Cameron’s essay “Our Daughters, Ourselves,” she proclaims “ We tell our bright, shining girls that they can be anything: firefighters, doctors, policewoman, lawyers, scientists, soldiers, athletes, artists. What we don't tell them, yet, is how hard it will be. Maybe, we say to ourselves, by the time they’re older it will be easier for them than it was for us.” My parents raised my sisters and I very congruous with this view. They would always tell us that we could do or be anything we wanted when we got older. However, contrary to Cameron’s apprehension on the matter, my parents always told us how difficult it would be straight from the beginning. They told us how financially strenuous becoming a doctor would be. They told us how
Lauren Alleyne uses the rigid form of the sonnet to navigate through the healing process after being sexually assaulted. Ten years after that night, she writes the sonnet sequence Eighteen, which deviates from the typical sonnet form in the aspects of the speaker, subject, and format. Playing off of the standard sonnet form, Alleyne is able to recount the emotions of that night during the first sonnet in the sequence. The typical sonnet tends to objectify the female body or one’s lover; in this sequence, the sonnets address what happens when an individual acts on these objectifications and assaults Alleyne. Alleyne deviates from the standard subject and speaker of the typical sonnet form to begin the healing process; the process begins
This week’s reflection is on a book titled Girls Like Us and it is authored by Rachel Lloyd. The cover also says “fighting for a world where girls not for sale”. After reading that title I had a feeling this book was going to be about girls being prostituted at a young age and after reading prologue I sadly realized I was right in my prediction.
Abuse is a difficult and sensitive subject that can have long lasting effects. These traumatic emotional effects are often intensified if the abuse happens at a young age because children do not understand why the abuse is happening or how to deal with it. There are many abuse programs set up to counter the severe effects which abuse can have. Even more, poets and writers all over the world contribute works that express the saddening events and force the public to realize it is much more real than the informative articles we read about. One such poem is Theodore Roethke’s My Papa’s Waltz which looks carefully through the eyes of a young boy into the household of an abusive father. Robert Hayden’s Those Winter Sundays is a similar poem from the perspective of a young adult reflecting back on the childhood relationship with his father and the abuse his father inflicted. These poems are important because they deal with the complex issues surrounding the subject of abuse and also show the different ways which children react to it. My Papa’s Waltz and Those Winter Sundays are similar poems because they use tone, imagery, and sounds and rhythms to create tension between the negative aspects of abuse and the boys own love and understanding for their father.
How do observations of an ordinary and personal custom (in this case, a birthday party), evolve into reflections on the disturbing realties of everyday life? In “Rite of Passage”, the speaker in Sharon Olds poem impassively relates how first-grade boys (including her son) participate in and view violence as an achievement. Through a Post-Modern focus on society’s more intimate and hushed truths, the poem speaks on the unspoken norms of the path from boyhood to manhood. Disclosing social conventions, which automatically accept and propagate what is the standard role for boys. The role of an aggressor. The result is a myriad of possible meanings in a text, which at first appears to satirize those assumptive roles. Yet, the speaker of the poem
He based his guilty verdict on the logical information provided in the courtroom. He continued to feel this way until later in the movie when he changed his appeal to pathos. The decision to change his mind was caused by the other jurors starting to change their minds. As the one juror that felt the boy was innocent continued to try and convince the others that there was a chance that they could all be wrong, most of the jurors were starting to see the possibility. Every time there was a new reason why he could be innocent, each juror had more to think about.
... believed in the innocence of the young man and convinced the others to view the evidence and examine the true events that occurred. He struggled with the other jurors because he became the deviant one in the group, not willing to follow along with the rest. His reasoning and his need to examine things prevailed because one by one, the jurors started to see his perspective and they voted not guilty. Some jurors were not convinced, no matter how much evidence was there, especially Juror #3. His issues with his son affected his decision-making but in the end, he only examined the evidence and concluded that the young man was not guilty.
As mentioned, the parents’ pains, negative emotions and hatred are presented in the first part. Even from the first few lines from the poem: “Ulcerated tooth keeps me...
A young girl who was trapped and confined in a space where she could no longer
In her essay, Jacqueline Jones explains the ideas of race and gender and states that they are hard to discuss as different categories in historical analysis because they are continually changing. Author also states that it is easy to find examples of physical appearance irrelevance of the definition of race or sex organs irrelevance to the definition of gender. Jones gives example of black men in the U.S army who were assigned to perform female service work. Later, Jones shows the duality of race and gender related issues in Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill case where both were members of the same class, yet it was not clear if he was the victim of racism or her the victim of sexism. Later she explains that racial ideologies were dissolved or
In Hayden’s poem “The Whippings,” the readers are given a more direct vision of what Hayden experienced at the hand of his foster mother. Hayden writes the poem in third person as he reminisces about how his mother “strikes and strikes the shrilly circling boy till the stick breaks,” and how “his tears are rainy weather to wound like memories” (The Whipping 1). He then ends the poem with by saying “… and the woman leans muttering against a tree, exhausted, purged—avenged in part for life long hidings she has to bear” (The Whipping 1). We see through the eyes of Hayden himself, that his foster mother would go far beyond a simple disciplinary punishment. Instead, she beat him in order to release her own frustrations for the demons in her life. Her actions filled Hayden’s childhood memories with pain and sorrow, and we see that through his own recollections in “The Whippings,” and “Those Winter Sundays” alike. In the poem “Those Winter Sundays,” Hayden’s choices in diction like the words “cracked,” and “ached” initiate the gloomy tone of the poem, and reflect the pain that derived from his relationship with his foster mother, which also could be a reason for the purposeful absence of Hayden’s foster mother in the poem (Howells 288-289). The reader also interprets that Hayden’s painful memories of being beaten and tormented as part of the unspecified “chronic angers” that haunt
In the case of the “A Dark Brown Dog”, the boy is found seated by the body of his friend. The one friend, who even if he hit or was mean to him, would still forgive him of the abuse. The dog is a classic poster child for victims from the hands of an abuser. The abuse becomes a sick, twisted game to the abuser. The abuser lands his blows, and the victim quick to apologize for their wrong doing, and beg for fogginess. Thus, becoming a never ending vicious cycle.
The dog quotes other characters whose presence is questioned by the woman. The referred-to characters are her lover, family members, and enemy. The poem is essentially a dialogue between the woman and her dog. She is astounded to sense that someone is “digging” on her grave, and is disappointed every time she provides an anxious guess. The woman’s first guess is her lover, and asks if he is planting a rut on her grave.
...ite moving and tragic, “striking his head against a stone, dashed out his brains”, this was unexpected to the reader and must have surprised the reader as the dog itself did not harm anyone and is guiltless. Here the effect on the reader must have left them surprised as they were not in for another shock.
In Anne Frank’s book, The Diary of a Young Girl, there are several conflicts. The main conflict is internal, and more specifically, it is man vs. self. The conflict is Anne having to adjust her life, attitude, demeanor, and etc. to live in extremely close quarters with strangers, at the same time trying to discover and learn who she really is. The Diary of a Young Girl is not only about the purging of the Jews in World War II, it is a true story about a young girl whose life is turned around as a result of the war, and how she must grow and adapt to her new situation. It is a tale about the discovery of one’s self, a book about adjusting and pruning a mentality and personality, amidst a raging war. Life before the Annex for Anne was simple,