The Whipping by Robert Hayden

Thesis Statement

People who are hurt or tortured in their childhood tend to offend others and take the revenge when they grow old.

Discussion

The poet in the first stanza dialogs regarding an old woman, who seems to be whipping a boy. However, the poet Robert Hayden does not mention in the poem whether this old lady who is whipping the boy again is the child's mother or not. Even then the character she is playing in the poem implies that she is the mother if the boy she is whipping once again. The word “again” used by the poet ...