When Mother Divorced You, We Were Glad. She Took It And

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The Victims

by Sharon Olds

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. Poetry Explication

• Introduce the reader to the poem: include title and author of poem and

include a brief summary of the content.

• Discuss the beginning of the poem (first stanza or first segment before the

poem seems to change theme or mood). What’s a specific technique you

notice? What’s a specific diction choice that affects the meaning?

• Discuss the middle of the poem. Techniques? Diction choice?

• Discuss the end of the poem. Techniques? Diction choice?

• Summarize briefly on the significance of the poem. Look back on the title of

the poem to see if it reflects anything important about theme or meaning.

• Aim for 250-300 wordsSharon Olds’ poem “The Victims” tells a child’s view of a parents’ divorce. The poem is

divided into two main sections: the first part in the past tense showing the speaker as

a child and the last section in the present tense with the speaker as an adult trying to

make sense of past events. The first section creates a negative tone toward the father,

who is painted as a villain by “Mother,” who “took it” from him “in silence” until she

finally “kicked [him] out.” Instead of having any sympathy for him, the children were

taught “to hate you and take it” and the children seem to have followed this direction

very well. While the poem never says specifically what Father did to justify his family’s

hatred, the speaker hints he could have had an affair (“your secretaries”) or could have

been an alcoholic (“your lunches with three double bourbons”), but clearly he misused

his power and his kids “grinned” at his disaster like they did when President Nixon

resigned. Line 17, with its strong diction (“annihilation”), caesura, switch to present

tense and first person, shows the switch to the second section which is stranger and

more abstract. This section, with long metaphor (comparing “bums in doorways” to

some kind of strange underwater creatures) and alliteration of the creepy “s” sound,

shows the speaker wondering about the other victim of the situation; maybe it was her

father and those like him who actually lost out, victimized by their own bad behavior.

Whatever it is, the first person “I,” now away from her mother’s bitterness, ends the

poem seeing how many people were “The Victims” of this bad situation.

Poem Explication: “The Victims”

279 words

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The Victims

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.The 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 wepricked 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.

Literary Analysis:

A great deal of Sharon Olds’ poetry is a daughter’s response to an abusive and uncaring father from the point of view of both a child and an adult. Though some would label Sharon Olds as a confessional poet and others claim she is simply egotistical and confessing nothing, the fact still stands that in her works Olds traces her relationship with her father from beginning to end, from abuse, to expulsion of the abuser, to her father’s death.The Victimsis an excellent example of one of Olds’ typical family snapshots that captures how the dysfunctional family reacted to the end of misrule by the father.

InThe VictimsOlds takes the point of view of the recollecting adult, showing no empathy for her father, but celebrating his ousting from the household and successive loss of job.

The word “it” in the first two lines carries ambiguous weight, suggesting abuse and mistreatment, but remaining non-specific.This generic description makes the poem more universal and less selfishly personal, but also minimizes the impact of her struggles.

This description and reference to abuse makes one wonder if Olds simply is mistaking contrived reverence and coy exhibitionism for honesty, trying to get attention to make up for the fact that she was never loved enough.

Olds’ simplistic language paints a very good, though slightly vague, picture of the father figure: a businessman with a drinking problem who abused his family.

Risky line breaks appear again, but Olds succeeds in pulling off this choppiness because of her mix of bluntness (how glad she was when her father left) and balanced emotional structuring (there is still a wonderfully human conflict of feelings between despair and glee).

Olds’ imaginative metaphors can be seen in comparing a cruel father to a bum—a man who gives so much abuse away to his family will eventually have nothing left, making him as worthless as a homeless beggar.

The end of the poem adopts a somewhat nautical theme (i.e. flippers, underwater, ships sinking), capturing a feeling of drowning; such a sensation could symbolize the weight of the situation on Olds as well as the way her father drowned in his own destructive nature.