"The Victims" by Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds teaches poetry workshops at the University of New York’s Graduate Creative Writing Program. She was invited in 2005 by the First Lady, Laura Bush, to the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.

When Mother divorced you, we were glad. She took it and
took it in silence, all those years and then
kicked you out, suddenly, and her
kids loved it. Then you were fired, and we
grinned inside, the way people grinned when
Nixon's helicopter lifted off the South
Lawn for the last time. We were tickled
to think of your office taken away,
your secretaries taken away,
your lunches with three double bourbons,
your pencils, your reams of paper. Would they take your
suits back, too, those dark
carcasses hung in your closet, and the black
noses of your shoes with their large pores?
She had taught us to take it, to hate you and take it
until we pricked with her for your
annihilation, Father. Now I
pass the bums in doorways, the white
slugs of their bodies gleaming through slits in their
suits of compressed silt, the stained
flippers of their hands, the underwater
fire of their eyes, ships gone down with the
lanterns lit, and I wonder who took it and
took it from them in silence until they had
given it all away and had nothing

left but this.
Olds writes about divorce from the perspective of an adult reminiscing about her past. The father of the family frequented work and was rarely home; his lack of interaction with his family was constantly endured by the mother, who “took it and/ took it in silence.” The mother “taught [them] to take it, to hate [the father], and take it until [they] pricked with her for [his] annihilation. The narrator is angry and upset at her father, believing herself to be the victim, however, when we return to the present the narrator questions her once eternal conviction as she passes “the bums in doorways.” The poem has continuous form with no rhyme or meter. The lines are also broken without formal grouping or fixed pattern. This gives the reader the impression that the narrator’s thoughts flow with little control as she travels back and forth from the past and present trying to cope with her past anger and current realization and consideration. Throughout the first part of the poem, the narrator refers to her father as “you” coldly, however she acknowledges him as her “Father” in line 17. This sudden shift is not separated by lines and stanzas; it was in the middle of the line, which gives the impression that the movement of the poem and the narrator’s thoughts are constantly drifting with her sudden discernment. Due to this shift in tone, the definition of victim also shifts from the mother and children to the father. In her adulthood, she realizes that the father was a victim of societal expectations and the tone changes from disdainful to sympathetic.