At first, Dominic Black's poem seems to describe a creature hiding in the house, the kind of thing a child might blame for creaking wood and squeaking doors. The Beast is in the floors and walls, and his roar can be heard whenever he calls. But the third and fourth stanzas change the picture. The Beast dislikes mum's cooking, picks up a large knife and stands in the doorframe, and mum shakes with fear and falls to the floor. In the last stanza the speaker calls him "my Beast of a father," so the monster turns out to be a real person.
The speaker seems frightened, helpless and desperate to escape, ending with a run out of the front door. The mood begins uneasy and almost spooky, then turns tense and shocking. Calling the father a Beast may be a way of coping, making something too painful to say plainly feel easier to talk about. The simple rhymes give it a nursery-rhyme feel, which makes the violence feel even more disturbing.