The Victims

Beginning with Line 7, “The Victims” shifts into a list in which the speaker lists various objects that are taken away from the father following the loss of his job. “We were tickled / to think of your office taken away” (Lines 7-8), the speaker begins, following this statement with a number of other people, objects, and things: “[Y]our secretaries taken away, / your lunches” (Lines 9-10). The speaker even goes so far as to list “your pencils” (Line 11) and “reams of paper” (Line 11) as objects taken from the father. By chronicling this detailed list of nouns, the speaker illustrates how the father not only lost his family and his job; he lost every little element of himself including the very pencils he used to write. The speaker strips the father of his identity and any semblance of power and adulthood he had. This concept is solidified when the speaker finally asks, “[w]ould they take your / suits back, too” (Lines 11-12) and “the black / noses of your shoes” (Lines 13-14).

Further, stripping the father of all items in his life sets the poem up for the final movement in which the speaker, in the present tense, passes “bums in doorways” (Line 18) whose suits are slits with their “their bodies gleaming through” (Line 19).