In Hayden's poem “The Whippings,” readers are given a more direct view of what Hayden experienced at the hands of his adoptive mother. Hayden writes the poem in the third person as he remembers how his mother "hits and hits the shrill twirling boy until the stick breaks" and how "her tears are the rainy weather that hurts like memories" (The Whipping 1). He then concludes the poem by saying “…and the woman leans muttering against a tree, exhausted, cleansed, avenged in part for the hidings she must endure throughout her life” (The Whipping 1). We see through Hayden's own eyes that his adoptive mother would go far beyond simple disciplinary punishment. Instead, she beat him to release her own frustrations about the demons in his life. His actions filled Hayden's childhood memories with pain and suffering, and we see this through his memories in both “The Whippings” and “That Winter Sundays.” In the poem "Those Winter Sundays," Hayden's diction choices such as the words "cracked" and "pained" initiate the poem's dark tone and reflect the pain that came from his relationship with his adoptive mother, who may also be a reason for the intentional absence of Hayden's adoptive mother in the poem (Howells 288-289). The reader also interprets Hayden's painful memories of being beaten and tormented as part of the unspecified "chronic anger" that haunts