I believe that this poem is actually about the abuse of a child, but could
have been intentionally written in a way so that the reader could interpret it in an
either/or way. For example, one line of the poem is “At every step you missed My
right ear scraped a buckle”. Some people could think that this line is about being
hit with a buckle, but some could think that it’s about playing around and the little
kid was short enough so that he could accidentally scrape his ear on his dad’s
belt buckle if he missed a step. When I first read this poem in the 7th grade, I
actually didn't think it was about the little kid getting abused; I interpreted it as
him and his father playing around the house after dinner. But after the whole
class shared their interpretations, most of them thought it was about the boy
being hit, and that's when I realized that the poem actually did sound like it was
about something more negative and dark than just lightly playing around.
When I reread this poem again in the 8th grade, the image of a kid being
hit by his drunken father in the kitchen came to mind instead of playing around
and breaking things by accident, the way it did last year because of how my
classmates interpreted it last year. I noticed lines like “You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt” and “Such waltzing was not easy”, and how they
could be describing child abuse. And today I'm not sure how I didn't see all this
when I was in seventh grade. This is where I believe rereading literature more
than once in different perspectives and with more than one idea in mind can add
more sides to it and even help you understand the text more and build onto your
ideas on it. Not just in poetry, but in any kind of writing it's best to not just think
one-dimensionally about what you're reading, even if a text may seem like it's
simple and straightforward at first. For example, when we reread Charlotte’s Web
earlier in the year, I realized even what seems like a book just for children like t
that can actually have a lot of meaning behind it.
I do think that both points of view, being abused or playing, can work out in
interpreting the poem since I have thought in both points of view, and that the
author could possibly have written the poem in a way so that you can’t really be
sure if it means something light or something dark, which is a writing tool that I
think is very interesting and can make writing really great. If a piece of writing is
multi-dimensional and colorful instead of cliche and completely forward, then the
writing is certainly enhanced.
In conclusion, I don’t want to pick one specific side on if the child in the
poem was being abused or really just playing, because the two both could work
and I’m not sure which is the “right” or “correct” side, if there is one. Good writing
is supposed to be multi-dimensional, and that’s what this poem is. It may be a
short poem, but there are so many ways you can interpret it.
