Anne Stevenson's The Victory

3 Pages 629 Words

Anne Stevenson is trying to portray a mother’s feelings of pain and anguish of giving birth to a child in the poem The Victory, “I though you were my victory / though you cut me like a knife” (Lines 1-2). Although she must endure such pain, it is also exciting for the mother is bringing new life into the world, which in fact feels like a “victory” to a new parent. However, throughout Stevenson’s poem denies the fact that giving birth to a child is a victory, by using words such as “antagonist” (Line 5), “bruise” (Line 6) and “scary” (Line 13). By using these selections of words, Stevenson is trying to portray the negative side of childbirth. This poem contains a tone of conflict and anger.
The mother feels her own blood running through the veins of the baby that lives within her, “The stains of your cloud of glory / bled from my veins” (Lines 6-8). From lines 9-10 we can interpret that she sees her child as a stranger for the child is described as a “blind thing” (Line 9) with “blank insect eyes” (Line 10). This mother sees her child as more of an insect than a human being.
In the last stanza of the poem, two rhetorical questions are asked, showing the mother’s true conflicts, “Why do I have to love you? / How have you won?” (Lines 15-16). These rhetorical questions are the basic questions of human existence.
The meaning of the “victory” is a basic theme that any parent can relate to. Through all the pain and agony that the mother has to suffer, a child is born. Babies require continual care from their parents for they are helpless on their own. Stevenson describes the basic helplessness of the babies with using the words such as “blind” (Line 9) and “hungry” (Line 14).
Stevenson throughout her poem seems to emphasize the pain that is felt when one brings a life into the world. “You bard the air. You sting / with bladed cries” (Lines 11-12), these are harsh w...