Chicken

Chicken

computer “The child who walks backwards”, by Lorna Crozier shows a problem often found in our society. The poem follows up an idea of abuse to a young boy by an adult. Abusage takes place within finishing the poem at, “while she lies sleeping” at this point the boy is walking around backwards getting injured. A personal experience that has happened to me is when my older cousin picked on me, because I was at a young age and he thinks he could do whatever he wanted. The mother in this poem probably thinks she can do whatever she wants to because of her possession on her son.

Upon reading this for the first time I felt sorry for the young boy to grow up with a parent like that. The point of view of the poem starts with a neighbor that has a very interesting relationship with the mother and her boy. She explains in the poem about the mother abusing her child. The author explains that because the boy has bad dreams he wakes in the night to, “steal through the halls”. Because the author uses the word, “steal”, maybe its the boys time alone and free of bad dreams in his own house, is time that does not belong to him, time he has to steal to have. The theme of the poem is to look past the easy and outer layer of things, to see what is really going on.

Another reason what I think this poem could be about is when it explains about a child that walks backwards. This might tie into the quote “Two steps forward, One step back”, because the mother isn’t teaching the child right from wrong. So the child is going to keep walking backwards becoming unsuccessful in the future until someone helps him move forward.

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