"The Whipping" by Robert Hayden

"The Whipping" by Robert Hayden
The old woman across the way
is whipping the boy again
and shouting to the neighborhood
her goodness and his wrongs.

Wildly he crashes through elephant ears,
pleads in dusty zinnias,
while she in spite of crippling fat
pursues and corners him.

She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling
boy till the stick breaks
in her hand. His tears are rainy weather
to woundlike 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 . . .
Well, it is over now, it is over,
and the boy sobs in his room,

And the woman leans muttering against
a tree, exhausted, purged--
avenged in part for lifelong hidings
she has had to bear.

The first feeling I get from this poem is darkness. It has a really depressing feel to it; which you could predict by just reading the title. This poem describes the perspective of a person watching a boy get beat with a stick by a women which has happened not just once, since it says "whipping the boy again." I'm predicting that the narrator is a child, because he/she seems helpless. They're watching a boy get whipped and describing it in detail as if they were disturbed and can't do anything about it.The author first uses the phrase "crashes through elephant ears" to give the readers a sense and image of how loud the boy was screaming. The boy is also helpless, because he is begging her not to hurt him while he stands in "dusty zinnias." It makes me think of flowers that are supposed to be pretty, but are made evil as they are dirty and the boy must be whipped in them. 

In the third stanza, it starts with, "She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling boy." The author repeats the word strike to make us imagine a women repeatedly beating the boy. The poem even says that the stick breaks, which gives us an idea of how hard she was hitting him. She also uses a metaphor, describing the boys tears like rainy weather. It makes me think of the scene as dark and stormy, as well as a mass flow of tears running down his face. The next scene is about his struggle. The poem says that he trys to break free, but the fear is seen in his face. This makes me imagine the boy with a red face, scared eyes, and falling to his knees trying to escape.

The author then takes a small turn, saying that the fear seen in the boy is even worse than seeing the boy being beaten, The most disturbing part is not that he is being whipped, but it is that he has lost his identity. All that is left is for the boy is to cry alone. The poem ends saying that the women is even tired from beating him, suggesting how much physical abuse it was. I imagine her against the tree, flushed with anger, knowing what she's doing is terrible but she must keep it a secret. She pretends like she really is a good person.  Even though, her reason to whip him is that he did wrong.