"Dreadful" by Shel Silverstein is a three stanza poem that contains a twisted story of a child who eats his infant sister. The poem was written in the perspective of the older brother who is believed to be guilty of eating the baby. The piece of writing was very open ended and didn't quite give the reader a direct answer to the mystery. You could have interpreted the poem in various ways.
Initially, the narrator states the tragedy that his baby sister has been eaten. As you read further on in the poem, you'll notice the narrator, or older sibling, seems suspicious towards the crime. Instead of stating the baby is missing, he says the baby has been eaten. Therefore he must have some knowledge of what happened. Silverstein writes “I
