Analysis of The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks For this assignment, I chose the poem "The Mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks. This poem is generally about abortion and the feelings a mother has. It's about the remembrance of the children aborted and the little things children do that the mother will miss. Many images are conveyed throughout this entire poem. When Brooks mentions "the singers and workers that never handled the air" it gives off an air of sadness. You get the feeling that Brooks is trying to convey, to the mother, a sense of longing for those little things mothers are know to be good at. This is shown in the line, "you will never wind up the sucking thumb or scuttle off ghosts that come" .Then when she starts to address the child saying, "you were born, you had a body, you died." its hard not to feel some sadness or even a feeling of injustice. All the incidents that I mentioned in the previous paragraph are among the many vivid images in this work. Brooks obviously either had experience with abortions or she felt very strongly about the issue. The feelings of sadness, remorse, longing, and unfulfilled destinies were arranged so that even someone with no experience or opinion on this issue, really felt strong emotions when reading "The Mother" .One image that is so vivid that it stayed with me through the entire poem was within the third line. Brooks writes, " the damp small pulps with little or no hair" . In the last half of the poem (lines 20 to 33), she changes who she is addressing. Instead of telling the mother what she is missing she is now talking to the "child" .When she does this it expresses other emotions. These new emotions are ones of sorrow, love, searching for forgiveness etc. The arrangement of the poem, going from talking to the mother to talking to the aborted child, is appropriate in my opinion. It helps the poem to flow easily and makes it simple to follow. I find most poems hard to picture in my head , but as I read "The Mother" I can imagine the whole situation happening. In the last lines of the poem the woman attempts to reassure the child that she loved it with all her heart.
Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "The mother" tells us about a mother who had many abortions. The speaker is addressing her children in explain to them why child could not have them. The internal conflict reveals that she regret killing her children or "small pups with a little or with no hair." The speaker tells what she will never do with her children that she killed. She will "never neglect", "beat", "silence", "buy with sweet", " scuffle off ghosts that come", "controlling your luscious sigh/ return for a snack", never hear them "giggled", "planned", and "cried." She also wishes she could see their "marriage", "aches", "stilted", play "games", and "deaths." She regrets even not giving them a "name" and "breaths." The mother knows that her decision will not let her forget by using the phrase "Abortions will not let you forget." The external conflict lets us know that she did not acted alone in her decision making. She mentions "believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate" and "whine that the crime was other than mine." The speaker is saying that her decision to have an abortion was not final yet but someone forced her into having it anyway. The external conflict is that she cannot forget the pain on the day of having the abortions. She mentions the "contracted" and "eased" that she felt having abortions.
These final words sum up her feeling of helplessness and emptiness. Her identity is destroyed in a way due to having children. We assume change is always positive and for the greater good but Harwood’s poem challenges that embedding change is negative as the woman has gained something but lost so much in return.
Similarly to the way people hold expectations for the daystar, or sun, to rise every day, mothers are expected to perform their duties like cleaning the house or taking care of the children. Both are taken advantage of and are not fully appreciated until they stop performing their duties. Throughout the poem, the woman’s daughter and husband are given names, “Liza” (line 12) and “Thomas” (line 17) respectively, but not her. The woman is only referred to as “she” or “her” which further highlights the lack of acknowledgement she receives. The mother is taken for granted by her family and is not regarded as important. Her efforts are ignored and she is never thanked for completing her tasks around the house because that is the role she is “supposed” to fulfill.
Although the little girl doesn’t listen to the mother the first time she eventually listens in the end. For example, in stanzas 1-4, the little girl asks if she can go to the Freedom March not once, but twice even after her mother had already denied her the first time. These stanzas show how the daughter is a little disobedient at first, but then is able to respect her mother’s wishes. In stanzas 5 and 6, as the little girl is getting ready the mother is happy and smiling because she knows that her little girl is going to be safe, or so she thinks. By these stanzas the reader is able to tell how happy the mother was because she thought her daughter would be safe by listening to her and not going to the March. The last two stanzas, 7 and 8, show that the mother senses something is wrong, she runs to the church to find nothing, but her daughter’s shoe. At this moment she realizes that her baby is gone. These stanzas symbolize that even though her daughter listened to her she still wasn’t safe and is now dead. The Shoe symbolizes the loss the mother is going through and her loss of hope as well. This poem shows how elastic the bond between the daughter and her mother is because the daughter respected her mother’s wish by not going to the March and although the daughter is now dead her mother will always have her in her heart. By her having her
Gwendolyn Brooks grew up in a racist time period; encouraging her writings to be about the life of a black during this time period. She grew up during one of the hardest time periods known as the Great Depression. Brooks was known for her writing poetry about racism and life of being a black American; she was often criticized for her works but also honored for showing encouragement and hope in her writings.
This darkly satiric poem is about cultural imperialism. Dawe uses an extended metaphor: the mother is America and the child represents a younger, developing nation, which is slowly being imbued with American value systems. The figure of a mother becomes synonymous with the United States. Even this most basic of human relationships has been perverted by the consumer culture. The poem begins with the seemingly positive statement of fact 'She loves him ...’. The punctuation however creates a feeling of unease, that all is not as it seems, that there is a subtext that qualifies this apparently natural emotional attachment. From the outset it is established that the child has no real choice, that he must accept the 'beneficence of that motherhood', that the nature of relationships will always be one where the more powerful figure exerts control over the less developed, weaker being. The verb 'beamed' suggests powerful sunlight, the emotional power of the dominant person: the mother. The stanza concludes with a rhetorical question, as if undeniably the child must accept the mother's gift of love. Dawe then moves on to examine the nature of that form of maternal love. The second stanza deals with the way that the mother comforts the child, 'Shoosh ... shoosh ... whenever a vague passing spasm of loss troubles him'. The alliterative description of her 'fat friendly features' suggests comfort and warmth. In this world pain is repressed, real emotion pacified, in order to maintain the illusion that the world is perfect. One must not question the wisdom of the omnipotent mother figure. The phrase 'She loves him...' is repeated. This action of loving is seen as protecting, insulating the child. In much the same way our consumer cultur...
In “Momma” by Chrystal Meeker, the narrator, is telling how their mother cares for her children. In "Momma" by Chrystal Meeker, the narrator is telling how a mother living in poverty cares for her children. In order to understand this poem, readers must understand that the family has arguments, the mother unconditionally loves her children, and the daughters eventually have guilt over the arguments and treatment of their mother.
But her use of pathos and description shows that even she can’t handle the dark moments that experience with young pregnant women. She describes the process of abortion, the way she feels as well as the pregnant victims. Tisdale wants people to be educated in this area, so less abortion have to be performed. As she narrates her stories of teenagers receiving abortions, she believes that in some circumstances abortion is necessary, but it can also be a cruel, and tragic thing to be a part of, and could easily be avoided if people were more educated in the matter. “Soon I am talking to an eighteen-year-old women pregnant for the fourth time” (Tisdale 650). Tisdale’s use of pathos does not help her in this case. As she describes in detail what goes on during abortion, readers come to realizes how terrible and dark it really is. Tisdale describes the emotion pregnant women feel as they are having their child ripped away from them.
The mother, however, refuses to acknowledge the child as anything but a child is a major conflict in this poem. Because she refers to her as ?child? and calls her ?baby,? it is clear that the mother does not take the child?s pleas seriously. The mother is certain that she kn...
Motherhood is a compassionate kinship between the mother and her offspring. Becoming a mother can be planned or unplanned depending on the person. Families tend to cherish the new beginning to a little human life. When someone decides to have a new life, it isn’t easy, and not only can some women not get pregnant, but the variation your body endures is amazing. The body goes through many life changing experiences. Some women can gain weight, or have a rollercoaster of emotions due to their hormones. Having a child is a very hard thing, because your whole life changes and it’s not all about you anymore. Children cannot control the family or mothers they have when born, they aren’t able to understand the concept of what is happening with their mothers or families until they are older. In novels, Incidents in the Life of a Slave girl, by Harriet A. Jacobs and The Awakening by Kate Chopin motherhood is portrayed in many different ways. The two stories differ in my way but both encounter similarities of motherhood in various ways.
..., a loss that everyone can either sympathize or empathize. However, instead of focusing on the pain and heartbreak of not having a mother, the narrator instead takes strength in the fact that her mother is connected to nature. Although her mother is not physically in her life, her body has, instead, been buried in the ground like a seed. This brings the narrator solace because at least her mother’s essence will always be present as long as there are trees, grass, and animals.
For the most part of the poem she states how she believes that it is Gods calling, [Then ta’en away unto eternity] but in other parts of the poem she eludes to the fact that she feels more like her granddaughter was stolen from her [or sigh thy days so soon were terminate]. One of the main beliefs in these times was that when someone died it was their time; God needed them and had a better plan. Both poets found peace in the idea that God had the children now and it was part of the plan, but are also deeply saddened and used poetry as a coping mechanism.
The first character we meet is Ruth Younger. Ruth is a hardworking mother who has had a thought life up until this point. The Writer opens up describing her by saying that “she was a pretty girl, even exceptionally so, but now it is apparent that life has been little that she expected, and disappointment has already begun to hang in her face.” (Pg. 1472) This description bears a strong resemblance to the line in Harlem, “Does it dry up, like a raison in the sun?” (Line 2) We immediately are thrown into the madness of her life. She wants desperately to have a happy family and is in constant disagreement with her husband’s ideas. We see how her living arrangements have made her believe that there will never be anything better in this world for her. The saddest part is that she believes that bringing another child into this sad existence is something she cannot do. When she makes the decision to visit the abortion doctor, it immediately brought me to the final line in the poem where Hughes states “Or does it explode?” (Line 11) There had to be an explosion of desperation for a w...
What does an ideal mother do? In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, the ideal of mother is described. In the story two mothers, Nana and Mariam, are showed as the model of a perfect mother. Through Nana and Mariam, Hosseini shows that an ideal mother must be willing to sacrifice, must do her best to ensure their children’s survival, and be able to utilize tough love. Throughout the book both moms are constantly sacrificing to make their children’s life better.
The poem The Mad Mother describes a woman that is going through hard times. She has lost her dignity and status as a wife because her husband has left her. Consequently she is stigmatized as crazy by her community and does not receive support from them. However, despite what she is going through, she is a happy woman because she has her child. She says, "Sweet babe! They say that I am mad / But nay, my heart is far too glad" (11-12) as she sings and rocks her baby. As long as she has her child, this woman seems content and fulfilled. It is clear in the poem that it is motherhood that brings enchantment and good spirits to the woman, and that she is dependent on her child for happiness.