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The Victims by Sharon Olds
Sharon Olds’ “The Victims” is another poem about the death of a character who is problematic for the speaker.
(Here I confess I feel a little silly insisting on the distinction between author and speaker, since Sharon Olds created an entire book of poems about her troubled relationship with her father. However, if even one of a poem’s details is fictional or unverifiable, I think it justifies the convention of separating author from speaker or narrator.)
Sharon Olds call her speaker’s character into question much more than John Crowe Ransom did in “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” (my last post). Olds is willing to speak ill of the dead. In fact, she might revel in it.
Therefore, is sympathy vs. judgment (again, see the July 24 Banjo52) the main tension in which are we caught in “The Victims,” or are both the speaker and her father likely to elicit more judgment than sympathy?
Remember, “sympathy” is not pity, which is condescending. Sympathy is a feeling of connection to, identification with, even respect for that other character—whom we find appealing in some way, perhaps to our alarm.
The Victims by Sharon Olds
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