“The Beating” by Ann Stanford
Explication Notes from TSO-PLAST annotations
1st) Speaker-someone abused. No age or gender are disclosed; perhaps a woman because of
the use of the term “belly.”
Occasion- during and immediately after the beating.
Setting- first, none given, then hospital
Purpose/theme- To highlight the lingering trauma after abuse; the shutdown of the mind
afterwards.
2nd) Paraphrase- the first blow dislocated her jaw, the second one hard against her skull.
Although the speaker tried to block the third, it only broke her arm.
Then the speaker was struck in the ribs, blood filling my lungs. As she fell she was hit in
the stomach. The fifth blow didn’t hurt much; she was starting to pass out. More blows that
she couldn’t keep count of. she was blinded, choking on blood. Now in shock she felt
disjointed. The speaker heard and saw nothing. She groans in pain, and then felt people near
me, touch me. She is covered up.
The hospital room is too bright on her half-blind eye. Even the bed hurts her. She is
encased in casts and splints. People ask her questions but her mind is gone, stuck on the
pleading for her life.
3rd) 1) diction- “sliding”(4) “flood” (5) “burst” (11) “curds” (12) “caged” (19) “the thing”
(22) “breaking” (10) “the flood of sense” (5)” eyes burst closed” (11)
Stanza 4-“displacement “
stanza 5- the room “tortures”
4th) 1) metaphor- mind to blackness (24)
Personification- white room tortures my eye (17)
2) symbol- “white thought”- “black ball “
) understatement- “sting” (10) “shifted” fell crooked” (4)
4) metonymy- room tortures instead of things within the room.
5th). 1) alliteration-repetition of harsh “B” sounds stanza 1 and stanza 6; rep of “S”
sounds in 3rd and 5th stanza
Rime- none- reason?
Refrain- none- reason?
6th) structure- broken & choppy- like the speaker’s thoughts will be after the beating for
example- Incomplete thoughts and sentences. Emphasis on painful words- the jarring blows at
the beginning if the line. Enjambment. Chronological order through actual beating.
Diva 1
Poetry Diva
Mrs. Powell
English Period 8
24 June 2024
Blow by Blow
“The Beating” by Ann Stanford unabashedly tells the story of a brutal attack. Who was
attacked or why is unknown- the speaker is ageless, raceless, and anonymous. It takes place in
the hospital after the initial beating, with the first four stanzas serving as a flashback to an
unknown time or place. The speaker has not recovered, setting the beating as traumatically
current. The stanzas of physical attack all lead up to the mental suffering, showing that the mind
does not recover even though the body may. Be it physical trauma as in “The Beating,” or
trauma of any sort, mental recovery is slow.
Following the incident blow by blow, the poem recounts how the first surprising blow
dislocated the speaker’s jaw, the second, brutally in the skull. The speaker tries to ward the third
blow off, and her arm is broken as a result. Next struck in the ribs, blood rushes through the
speaker’s lungs. Again she is hit, in the stomach, as she falls to the ground. As the fifth blow
hurts less, the speaker has begun to lose consciousness or go into shock. The blows continue, but
she cannot keep track of how many any longer. Blinded with pain and choking on blood, the
speaker completely disconnects from her body. Disjointed, she is cognizant of nothing except her
own groans. Unidentified people are there, perhaps her saviors, and then they cover the speaker
as she passes out. Now awake in the hospital, the cleanliness of the room and softness of the bed
are a painful contrast with the memories. Half-blinded, bandaged, the speaker cannot answer the
doctors or nurses. Her mind is gone, stuck on the beating, trapped pleading for her life. No other
thoughts surface.
Diva 2
Replete with understatement, “The Beating” downplays the abuse to show the mind’s
lack of coherency- a functional person would not say “my jaw / Shifted” as in lines 1 and 2, but
that it was “broken,” “dislocated,” even “shattered.” Again in line 4, understatement highlights
the victim’s altered state when her wrist “[falls] crooked” thus mildly replaying the breaking
bone. “My eyes burst closed,” the speaker dryly and paradoxically testifies in line 2, stressing not
only the severity of the blow to her face, but also the escalating confusion and chaos in her mind.
Referring to blood as “curds” (12) communicates more of the horror itself. Although curds are
nothing unusual, the connotation of eating bloody clots is appropriately sickening. By line 9 the
speaker hardly feels the pain and horrifically by line 13, she is “flying.” Her mind has become
incapable of progressing past the trauma.
“The Beating”’s major metaphors occur toward the end of the poem in which the victim’s
mind is broken, a “black ball” (23), a void emptiness. This and the metonymy of the “white room
[torturing her] eye” (17) show the illogical thoughts following an attack and the inability of the
mind to regain functionality afterwards. The hospitalized speaker, fixated on “No Blow!” (21),
cannot form smooth, coherent thoughts, nor add any sentimental words to the recount. What
should now be a soft, safe environment is now an enemy as well as it “tortures” her and threatens
to suffocate her.
The first-person chronological depiction of the beating culminating to “the place [she] lay
(14) ironically gives structure to a senseless act of violence, and a coherence to that which is
incomprehensible. The fragmented structure within the stanzas, however, reflects the process of
a broken mind. Although the lines are arranged in quatrains, the sentences within are chopped up
with the resulting impact run on to the next line. “…my jaw / Shifted.” (1-2) and …caught in /
My lungs.” (5-6) mirror the jarring altercation, and its powerful physical impact. The speaker’s
waning consciousness is felt through clipped lines which are understandably unclear and
Diva 3
incomplete. Exhausted, she struggles to breathe out, “Hands touched / My wrist. Disappeared.
Something fell over me” (15-16). The fragmentation reflects the deadened mind, and the brutal
essence of abuse is, in turn, transferred to the reader.
Stanford’s “The Beating” provocatively attacks the observer/reader with the ferocity of
the violence portrayed in the poem. Although we wish to escape, turn away, or even to
intervene, the beating imposes its way to a frightening conclusion. Although brutality may be
physically over, the impact on the victim, and in this case the reader, is already internalized and
inescapable.
Work Cited
Stanford, Ann. “The Beating.” Sound and Sense. Eds. Laurence Perrine and Thomas R. Arp.
USA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1992. 238. Print.