Summary Of The Whipping By Robert Hayden

The poem “ The Whipping” by Robert Hayden begins with a lady striking a child with a stick to the point it breaks and all the while she wails on about his wrong doings and her justification in her actions. It then delves into a memory of someone's abusive past and ends with the present in which the child is sobbing and the woman regaining her composure along with relief of gaining vengeance. On the surface the poem is merely the tale of an abusive mother and the poor child who's left to deal with said reality. However, “ The Whipping” has a much deeper meaning in which Hayden uses diction such as alliteration, metaphors, and enjambment to add further to the overall meaning of the poem violence begets violence or the cycle of violence: abuse breeding more abuse.

The depth of “ The Whipping” and its hidden meaning can begin to be showing within the 1st quatrain. With Hayden's well placed “again” in the 1st lines of the poem we can gather

Furthermore, evidence that the mother must verbally utter her “goodness” in beating said boy proves that she herself doubt what she’s doing is correct and as such must vocally justify herself. Hayden uses the following lines of 5-8 to emphasize the sheer severity of the abuse and through enjambment Hayden can portray the confusion and scenery of the chase “.. through elephant ears, pleads in dusty zinnias,...”. The use of alliteration in the later lines of 9-10 “She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling boy till the stick breaks..” is meant to emphasize the degree of the woman’s abuse while the stick breaking is an example to the extreme measure the woman went to beat her child. Lines 13-15 are a hidden memory of past abuse the person experienced whether it be the witness or the woman herself either adds to the bigger meaning