Discipline, will a child learn from it, or would he disregard it? Mervyn Morris fully answers this question in the poem "Little Boy Crying." The poem illustrates a situation with a father and son, in which the son has been struck and for revenge has used false tears to hurt his father. The poet uses many sound and language techniques to help bring out the significance of the poem, such techniques are; assonance, alliteration, personification, onomatopoeia, metaphor, imagery and diction, all these techniques demonstrate the complication of parenting.

The first line of the poem instantaneously begins with an almost iambic pentameter. This is an example of enjambment, by using this technique the poet foreshadows that something within the poem is incomplete thus giving us the impression that it is immoral. This technique also puts an emphasis on the dramatic change of the child's facial features.

In stanza one...