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.