The process of addressing memories of private suffering within “The Victims” by Sharon Olds is implied through contradictory perspectives. In the poem there is a shift in focus and tone during line 17. The poem addresses the issues of suffering from two distinct perspectives, the first coming from a child and the second from an adult woman. The narrative, imagery, and diction are different in the two contrasting parts of the poem, and the second half carefully qualifies the first, as if to illustrate the narrator's more mature and established attitudes in her older years – a stipulation of easy imitation of the former years, when the mother's opinions dominated and set the tone. Change governed the structure of the poem here; differences in age and attitude are supported by a completely different point of view and frame of reference. The change in tone of the stylistic elements used by Sharon Olds implicitly portrays the impact that suffering has on the family sphere; the complex emotions that arise due to divorce are conveyed through past and present perspectives, comparative images, and a significant change in tone. The change in perspective of the narrative, from the past to the present, portrays the father in two different lights. The poem is told from the point of view of the daughter of a couple having marital problems. The beginning of “The Victims” illustrates the memories that the woman recalls with nostalgia of her childhood. From lines 1 to 17 the narrator evokes her father, with the repetition of “you,” (1, 3) who had behaved terribly during the narrator's youth and who was abruptly kicked out of the house and divorced by her mother. The narrator describes her father who, for his daughter, lived in a luxurious and insensitive...... middle of paper......Olds to portray to the reader, through diction, the image of a person who is drowning. This image, after being taken, analyzed, and dissected, reveals deeper connections to the narrator, the narrator's father, and society as a whole. In conclusion, “The Victims” concerns real purposes and themes that enhance the overall text. When they hear the term victim many people immediately think of a target of violence or abuse. In the poem “The Victims,” Olds portrays sufferers as victims of an experience, rather than a physical scar. As a child, Sharon Olds' parents divorced. So who is the victim in “The Victims”? As the narrative, imagery, and diction evolve, from the first half to the second half of the poem, the classification of the victim also changes. Throughout the poem the mother, children and father are all victims, but also considered guilty.