Gwendolyn Brooks The Mother Analysis

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While studying new criticism and reader response we were told to read the poem “The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks. Throughout this essay I will be applying what I have learned in class to help dissect that experience to clearly differentiate both. First I will talk about new criticism and what it was like reading “The Mother” through that style. Then I will continue on to reader response and share the journey through our reading with that style. After that I will compare the similarities between both styles. Finally, to conclude I will briefly discuss which one I preferred more. New Criticism was clearly laid out by three important facts in our “Texts and Contacts” book:
“1. The work itself should be your focus-not the author’s intention, not …show more content…

It wasn’t that enjoyable for me as well. While reading this poem I had to remember that everything essential for me to know was in the poem itself. I needed to find the unifying idea that held it all together to form my conclusion. Through new criticism I had to be very literal. So it brought up things like how can she be a mother if she has never had any children? How can she love something that was never created? How could she have destroyed something that was never created? My conclusion from this reading was that though the speaker never had children she is calling herself a mother because of the love she had for her aborted children. Not that much fun of a conclusion. Seems very easy to get to, however, the difficult part for me was staying straight on the text. I found myself a couple of times wanting to add my feelings or thoughts to form my conclusion. But, according to new criticism that would be incorrect.

Now, reader response criticism is very different. In our text book for class it is portrayed by these three key facts:
“1.The reader response is what counts. We can’t know for sure what an author intended, and the text itself is meaningless unless a reader responds.
2. Readers actively create (rather than passively discover) meanings in texts, guided by certain goals and rules that may be personal or shared with other members of a community.
3. Responding to a text is …show more content…

This sometimes would add to or change your initial thought. There were so many more conclusions when speaking with my group on reader response. For example, Elsy one of the girls in my group enjoyed of the poem was structured. The poem brought up questions just like mine on how she could say that she is so regretful yet supposedly do it more than once. The great thing about reader response is that it allows you to ask questions like that. To look at little things and maybe it would change your whole opinion on something. Like when going through the passage I felt sorry for her pain through her imager, but when I got to the end and saw the “I loved you all” I was like “wait a minute” and completely changed my feelings towards her. I was allowed to change my feelings and thoughts toward the work because of that one sentence. Where with new criticism you can’t do that. Reader response also allowed us to talk about things and have thoughts brought up that we didn’t even think of ourselves. When discussing the reading with the other girl in my group Jessieka she brought up how she was offended for people who wear told they couldn’t have kids. This wouldn’t have mattered in new criticism, that thought hadn’t even crossed my mind, but after she mentioned it I was like “Yeah that’s true too!” Reader response is so much

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