Hidden Crime In The Mother By Gwendolyn Brooks

544 Words2 Pages

How do you erase a memory? You can’t!!! While trying to forget the details of the hidden crime, yes in some eyes abortion is a crime, they can never be erased. “Abortions will not let you forget” (1). The poem “The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks, strikes the reader with a gamut of emotions! While the physical child is not present, the spirit of that child yet lives on! “I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children” (11). How can a mother heal after aborting her child? The physical child was erased, mourned and ironically eternally imprinted in the mother’s mind, resulting in the Ghost Child! While the mother thought that the best choice for her life was aborting her baby, she didn’t realize the remaining residue would leave a permanent impact on her life. “Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you all.” (32 - 33) She physically erased the child, consequently after the fact the ghost child tortures and taunts her memory, leaving her remorseful! “If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths, …show more content…

Whether the intentions were good or not, the thought of erasing a living creature from this earth is not easy. The question arises: How do you live each day and move forward? The Ghost Child is harder to put out of the mother’s mind because she’s filled with visions of what will never be! “The singers and workers that never handled the air” (4), because the child was not born, the mother doesn’t know if the ghost child would’ve been a singer, movie star or a CEO of a corporation! What kind of mother would she have been? All because she snatched away their breath before the child could experience being! While she physically erased the child, the consequence was a spiritual birth of a ghost child that torments and haunts her memory, leaving her remorseful and full of grief. Who would Ghost Child look like? Every child that crosses her path is a constant reminder of what could have

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