In “The Victims,” the larger theme posed by the title is victimization. At the start of the poem, the speaker defines the victims as “Mother” (Line 1) and “her / kids” (Lines 3-4). The lines “[s]he took it and / took it, in silence, all those years” (Lines 1-2) characterize the mother and children as victims; further, the mother’s choice to divorce the father, which made her kids so happy they “grinned inside” (Line 5), solidifies this victim persona. While Olds does not define what the “it” (Line 1) is that the mother and kids took, it can be inferred that it was violence, abuse, or neglect, which led to the mother to divorce the father.

However, throughout the course of the poem, the theme of victimization and who the victim is shifts. The father, having everything taken away from him, is akin to a homeless man living in tatters in the streets; his “annihilation” (Line 17) is complete. Yet, as an adult, the speaker suddenly notices that their mother “taught [them] to take it, to hate [the father] and take it” (Line 15). This “hate” (Line 15) the mother instilled in the children serves as the catalyst for the father’s fall from power, in the family, in the workplace, and in the larger world.