The Inexcusable Reality Of The Whipping By Carl Hayden

The Inexcusable Reality of Child Abuse

In the poem “The Whipping”, Robert Hayden references a child and his abusive mother.

From the perspective of an observant neighbor, the audience is well aware of the situation and its descriptive quality. As this horrifying scene takes place, the neighbor watches and finds themself with a sense of familiarity. “His tears are rainy weather to wound like memories: My head gripped in bony vise of knees, the writhing struggle to wrench free, the blows, the fear worse than blows that hateful Words could bring, the face that I no longer knew or loved . . .”

(Hayden). Unfortunately, it seems as though this neighbor was also abused as a child, and is presented with the memories of their past. In this poem, the reader is exposed to the awful

Even though the poem “The Whipping” by Carl Hayden was written in 1962, his exposure to child abuse is still inexcusably relevant in todays society.

During the time period in which this poem was written, child abuse was not only socially acceptable, but also legal. “A federal law from 1974, the Child Abuse Prevention & Treatment

Act (CAPTA), further bolstered efforts to eliminate child abuse by funding programs to help individuals identify and report child abuse”(Biddle). This represents that at the time the poem was written, parents were not punished by law for abusing their children. In the poem, the watching neighbor did not call law enforcement due to the simple reason that there was nothing they would be able to do about the scenero. The neighbor was watching a situation where there

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was nothing to do but wait until the whipping was over. “Well, it is over now, it is over, and the boy sobs in his room” (Hayden). Luckily, there are now laws in place to protect children that are subject to child abuse, yet this doesn’t stop some parents from demonstrating abusive tendencies.

Despite child abuse being impermissable in todays society, it still transpires. Child