Divorce In Sharon Olds 'The Victims'

Chelsea Rathburn’s “After Filing for Divorce” compares the emotions that the speaker feels after filing for a divorce to the morning after a wild party and all the mess someone might find after waking up and realizing all the destruction that is left in the aftermath. Rathburn’s speaker recalls how she felt in the beginning of the marriage and now how she feels after filing for the divorce. She sees the wreckage that is her life, the dread of the cleanup, and how her happiness has strayed so far from where it began.

The divorce rate in the United States is higher than fifty percent today. The divorce rate continues to increase in America due to many reasons, one of them being that society today is a disposable society. Back in the day, when someone had a broken shoe he or she would fix it, and if there was a problem with a couple’s marriage, the two would work through it. But today, it is easier to ignore the problem, throw away what we do not like anymore and move on to the next, which is not the right way to live. In Lorrie Moore’s “A Kid’s Guide to Divorce”, Moore writes about a child and his or her mother. The two are sitting in their living room watching TV as they

“Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are two stories that reveal the consequences of individual suffering. These consequences include estranging relationships, bitter behavior, and even illness, addiction, or death. Throughout each of these stories, Sonny and John’s wife, known as the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, continue to suffer due to John’s and Sonny’s brother’s, known as the narrator of “Sonny’s Blues”, failure to meet obligations and familial compassion. Neither the narrator in “Sonny’s Blues” nor the husband, John, in “The Yellow Wallpaper” serve as the villains of the stories, however, I believe we are able to see how both their inabilities to effectively

In “The Victims” by Sharon Olds it describes a divorce through the eyes of the parents’ children. The first section is shown through past tense as the speaker is a child and the last section is shown in present tense with the speaker already being an adult trying to make sense of past events. The word “it” in the first two lines carries a tremendous weight, hinting at the ever so present abuse and mistreatment, but remaining non-specific. The first part generates a negative tone toward the father who is referred to as malicious by the mother who “took it” from him “in silence” until she eventually “kicked him out.” Through the entirety of the poem the children are taught to hate their father. Who taught them? Their mother showed them that their father was a villain and were taught to have no sympathy for him but “to hate you and take it” and so they did so. Although the poem never directly states what the father did to receive the family’s hated, the speaker gives examples as to why he is hated.

In the United States, an all-too-frequent occurrence unfortunately is divorce. I feel that this is a sad thing. Billy Collins tackles this delicate issue masterfully in his poem “Divorce,” an eighteen-word, four-line poem that catches the tone of many splits while using simple things like utensils and tables to make examples of a couple’s situation, using metaphors, imagery, nostalgia, and irony.

Divorce is a negative experience for all who are involved, especially children. Maile Meloy’s “Hot or Cold,” a short story originally published in The New Yorker on December 22, 2003, is a reflection about her life as a child of divorce. The premise of the story is that the narrator is looking back on a memory from her childhood where she is in her family’s Volkswagen bus with a babysitter and her younger brother. Outside, her parents were skiing when a bear began to chase them, presumably because her mom was carrying chicken sandwiches in her backpack. At first, they tried to sing “The Bear Went Over the Mountain” in a humorous attempt to scare the bear off. They cross country skied back to the bus as he followed them, and zoomed off. The narrator witnessed the whole ordeal, and comes to think of it as a representation of her parents’ divorce. Meloy’s utilization of literary devices, including juxtaposition, symbolism, and imagery, tells the story of her parent’s divorce through her eyes as a young girl.

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In a country where Divorce is more normalized than ever before, one can be guilty of neglecting to consider the pain it can cause, not just the couple, but also their children. The short story “Hot or Cold” by Maile Meloy is a remembrance from the author's life which communicates the divorce of her parents represented in a nostalgic memory from her past. In the piece, the author’s young self plays in a van while her parents deal with an unexpected encounter with a bear. After a brief chase, the parents escape and the family drives away. The author masterfully develops the story by hinting at the nature of the parents relationship by adding clever metaphors, until it is apparent that the parents eventually divorce and that the story is only a dream. In the short story, the author utilizes juxtaposition, a motif, and metaphors, to suggest that memories create narratives, true or otherwise, that help one comprehend events that are otherwise incomprehensible.

The use of comparative imagery throughout “The Victims” suggests that divorce induces suffering on the family sphere. During the first half of the poem a resilient (strong?) metaphor is present. The comparison between the family’s reaction to the father’s misfortunes and the way society responded to the disgraceful retreat from the U.S.