The Child Who Walks Backwards Analysis

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. Abuse can happen anywhere; at school, undercovered

Even though the child does constantly runs into daily objects around the house, he would eventually learn and adapt from his mistakes after a couple of bashes. This proves that the mother is covering something up, the mother could have placed safety precautions or kept an overwatch over her child. In addition, the mother claims that her child constantly has night terrors. “She says he is bother by dreams, rises in sleep from his bed to steal through the halls and plummet like a wounded bird down the flight of stairs.” The mother claims that the child is at fault for having the illness of sleepwalking. Due to the first stanza, it already proves that the mother has no care for her child. With the proof of the lack of care for her child indicates that the mother is lying to the neighbour. The neighbour suspects that there is some underlying cause to the child’s injuries. The suspicious neighbour says that she saw her child climb up her “maple with the sureness of a cat.” There’s no way that with the cautious behaviour of a cat the child “trips in his room, cracks his skull on the bedpost, smacks his cheeks on the floor.” At this point the neighbour is fully convinced that