We Remember Your Childhood Well

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We Remember Your Childhood Well What emotions does the poet present in this poem? How does the poet present these emotions? This poem conveys emotions of frustration, manipulation and denial. The poem is a dramatic monologue and an obviously frustrated adult figure is talking to a grown-up child. The adult figure is denies that the child was ever hurt or mistreated or hurt in any way, however it’s clear something has gone wrong and the child remembers something very different. The parent-child relationship has obviously broken down. One of the main emotions presented in this poem is denial and the speaker sounds very defensive. Whilst the grown-up child has been asking about her childhood and has been saying, it seems like, how horrible it is, the adult figure insists that the child was brought up well and lovingly, and suggests that it is all in the child’s head and she has made the whole thing up when the speaker says “The whole thing is in your head.” Another time the narrative voice seems in denial is in the last stanza. The speaker has said “nobody left the skidmarks of sin on your soul and laid you wide open for Hell”. This is a very powerful metaphor and it conveys ideas that maybe someone or something has marked or ruined her soul and made it unpleasant. The “laid you wide open for Hell” has connotations of continued sexual abuse or prostitution and “for Hell” could be describing the person who was doing it to her as hellish and scary. The poet has used effective sound techniques. When the poet writes “Boom! Boom! Boom!” it is an onimatopere and give us ideas of violence and that the now grown-up child was
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