a. “Abortion will not let you forget (line 1).” b. Gwendolyn Brooks starts off her poem “The Mother” with an attention-grabbing line. In this poem, the narrator contemplates abortion, what it is and the lives that could have been led by the children that she never had. c. Brooks puts irony to use throughout this poem, from the title to the final lines. II. Body a. The use of irony can be found in the very beginning of the poem and even before. i. The title “The Mother” is ironic in that the “mother” never actually gave birth to any children. ii. The second line, “You remember the children you got that you did not get,” speaks of the fetuses she was pregnant with, but has aborted. iii. In lines 5-6, “You will never neglect or beat/ Them, or …show more content…
silence or buy with a sweet,” the mother is imagining her relationship with her could-be children and saying that she would never do these things to them, which is ironic because they will never exist. b. Through the middle of the poem, the irony continues. i. Even though the narrator speaks of the aborted fetuses throughout the poem as though they are living infants who would one day grow up, she refers to them as her “dim killed children (line 11).” The use of the word “dim” here is an acknowledgement that they only barely, dimly, existed. ii. In lines 13-4, the mother says, “…I have eased/ My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.” She’s saying that she has “eased” or comforted her unborn children by breastfeeding them, though they “could never suck” because they were never born. iii.
In this part of the poem, she describes the lives the children could have and what she had taken away from them, if they would have ever become children. At the end, she says, “Even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate (line 21),” meaning that even though she made the decision to abort her pregnancies, she wasn’t deliberately trying to take those things away from her children who would never be. c. The last part of the poem uses irony while the mother is questioning abortion, and what abortion itself means. i. “…You are dead./ Or rather, or instead,/ You were never made (lines 24-6.)” Here, the mother is questioning whether or not she killed her unmade children by having an abortion. Is it murder if they were never born? ii. “You were born, you had body, you died./ It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.” Here she says that the children lived, but without actually living—never laughing, planning or crying. III. Conclusion Throughout “The Mother,” from beginning to end, Brooks utilizes irony to show the inner struggle of a mother who was never a mother. From the title itself to the final lines, the use of irony was apparent as the narrator addresses her nonexistent children, imagines the lives they might have led, and questions what abortion really
is.
Are all mothers fit for motherhood? The concept of motherhood is scrutinized in the stories “The Rocking Horse Winner” and “Tears Idle Tears”. In “The Rocking Horse Winner” by D.H Lawrence the mother, Hester, unpremeditatedly provokes her son into providing for her through gambling. In the story “Tears Idle Tears” by Elizabeth Bowen, Mrs. Dickinson disregards her son’s emotions and puts more emphasis in her appearance than her son’s wellbeing. Hester and Mrs. Dickinson both were inadequate mothers. Both the mothers were materialistic, pretended to love their offspring, and their dominance hindered their children’s progress in life.
In the novel All Over but the Shoutin’ Rick Bragg shows the love and devotion of what every mother should have through his mother. The only woman that Bragg truly cares for and takes time out of his day is for his mother Margaret Marie. Bragg tries to do the best for his mother and tries his best to make her proud of him. Bragg learned early in life that his mother strived to give her children everything possible. For Mrs. Bragg her children are the reason she wakes up everyday and tries to make a better life for them.
The author, L Frank Baum, uses this irony thematically, with the message being that sometimes what we are looking for in life is right in front of us.
Another example of irony is when Leonce comes back from his night of enjoyment and tries to wake Enda up to be his audience. Leonce gets annoyed when she does not give him her attention and here the voice of the story refers to Edna as him “sole object of his existence”. “He thought it very dis...
It is ironic in the sense that her shortest lines in the poem contradict each other. She discussed the letter in the mail, and then discussed the phone she is using and how she needs to put it down. The sentence “I had the idea” also adds to the thought that in her world, people are thinking using the mind that was wonderfully created without the help of technology. In a busy world of words and moments happening so fast, these short sentences appeal to the readers by letting us take in the words one by one. The purpose of her using these short, easy to understand sentences is to emphasize the idea that these are the little things that we need to most appreciate.
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.
The setting of the poem is a day at the ocean with the family that goes terribly awry. This could be considered an example of irony, in that one would normally view a day at the beach as a happy and carefree time. In “Feared Drowned,” Olds paints a very different scenario, using dark imagery to create the setting: “…suit black as seaweed / Rocks sticks out near shore like heads.” The poem illuminates moments of intense fear, anxiety and the element of a foreseen sense of doom. Written as a direct, free-style verse using the first-person narrative, the poem opens with the narrator suspecting that her husband may have drowned. When Olds writes in her opening line: “Suddenly nobody knows where you are,” this signals to the reader that we are with the narrator as she makes this fearful discovery.
With the final lines give us a better understanding of her situation, where her life has been devoured by the children. As she is nursing the youngest child, that sits staring at her feet, she murmurs into the wind the words “They have eaten me alive.” A hyperbolic statement symbolizing the entrapment she is experiencing in the depressing world of motherhood.
On the second stanza, the woman was haunted by the voices of her child in her mind. She said that under the circumstance she is right now, she has no choice but to have a abortion. Then she express her feeling and felt sorry about what she had done. “And your lives from your unfinished reach, If I stole your births and your names, Your straight baby tears and your games” (Gwendolyn Brooks) she show remorse that she stolen her child life and her child would get to experience the first tear and games. So now her baby already going through death.
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.
Unlike the rest of the poem, these final lines are not ironicthey are serious and sad. But the impact of the plain and simple conclusion is much more effective because of its contrast with the ironic tone which precedes it.
..., 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.
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.
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.
The title of the story represents irony when the true essence of the title is completely different from what the reader might think it to be.