[continued from previous message]   
      
   with his position as a symbolic menial, as servants are expected to   
   retire to their quarters when their services are not needed.   
      
   As to corporal punishment, it may not have been viewed as abusive at the   
   time, but it is viewed as such today.  I personally feel that it depends   
   upon the situation, and the severity of the physical punishment.   
   However whipping a six-year old boy (Little George says that he was   
   "only six" in the second stanza) on his bared bottom with a leather belt   
   would be considered abusive under any circumstances regardless of the   
   time.  This is the sort of corporal punishment that was meted out to   
   criminals in the public square with the leather belt making an   
   inexpensive substitute for a whip.   
      
   And, once again, I can only stress that the idea of a six-year old boy,   
   lying in bed so frightened that he is in danger of peeing himself, with   
   his bared bottom exposed while awaiting his father's arrival with a belt   
   paints such a harrowing picture of a child broken in spirit that I find   
   it too deeply disturbing for words.   
      
      
   >> That poor little boy had a bleak, loveless, existence filled with   
   >> verbal, emotional, and physical abuses.   
   >   
   > He may think he does, though that's not what he says. He's just relating   
   > the facts as he remembers them. (Since he doesn't exist outside the   
   > poem, there's no point in quibble over what he thinks; that's why I left   
   > all that to the reader).   
      
   Again, he strongly intimates that by referring to it as his Father's   
   house, and by expressing his desire to burn it to the ground.   
      
      
   >>> Adding them together like that, it's easy enough to conclude that the   
   >>> father had been abusive; but I'll point out that all of those events   
   >>> were things children commonly experienced 50-60 years ago, and that none   
   >>> of them were commonly considered abusive.   
   >>   
   >> Um... I was a child 50-60 years ago, and my father was physically   
   >> abusive (for a two year period after my mother's death) -- and I find   
   >> your story to be horrifying.   
   >   
   >> Normal children may occasionally have been physically punished for   
   >> tracking dirt into the house, and such, but look at your poem... the   
   >> other children are outside playing while Little George is stuck inside   
   >> the house doing chores.   
   >   
   > I'm sure many "normal children" had to do chores when they'd rather be   
   > playing with their friends. That wasn't only my experience, but that of   
   > most of my friends, and they all seemed "normal" enough to me.   
      
   But Little George makes it clear that he "never knew" the "mysterious   
   games" the other children were playing.  This clearly implies that he   
   *never* knew such games as Hide and Seek, Blind Man's Bluff, Tag, or any   
   other game that involves other children.  Little George didn't just have   
   a few chores to perform.  He had nonstop chores all day long -- so many   
   chores that he never had the opportunity to join the other children in   
   their play.  Had he joined them, their games would no longer be   
   "mysterious" or unknown (he "never knew" what they were).   
      
   --   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)