Gwendolyn Brooks The Mother Analysis

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

the reader’s response.
2. The purpose of your focus is to explain the work’s organic unity- how every feature, large and small, contributes to its meaning.
3. Great literary works are marked by some kind of complexity, as levels of meaning, oppositions, tensions, ironies, and ambiguities are unified.”
Now, truthfully some of that went straight over my head. However, this is what I got from that reading. New Critism’s main focus is the work itself. Nothing else. For example, while reading according to new criticism you find yourself explaining your feelings toward something in the story, STOP! You’re no longer on the right path. Don’t get yourself caught in what you think something means or what the author intended for you to get. Because then also you are no longer following new criticism. Everything you get out of this style is strictly from the work itself. “What you see is what you get” type of thing.
We are also given three points to guide us when putting new criticism into practice which are as followed:
“1. Read closely. You can assume that everything is carefully calculated to contribute to the work’s unity- figures of speech, point of view, diction, recurrent ideas or events, etc.
2. Find oppositions, tensions, ambiguities, and ironies in the work
3. Indicate how all these various elements are unified- what holds them together”
What I got from that was when reading through a piece of work with new criticism you need to use the clues throughout the passage to guide to how you are supposed to think. For instance, while reading through a passage I should be looking at the structure of the work. Trying to really focus on what unifying thought is holding all the different elements together. Being careful to not pull any outside feelings or thoughts to the work and just focusing on it as a whole. In this style there is only one right way of getting the message from the work if followed correctly.
My experience with reading “The Mother” through new criticism was somewhat difficult and easy.

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

a process. Descriptions of that process are valuable because one person’s response may enrich another reader’s response.
Basically reader response criticism is more personal. You are allowed and actually required to add your thoughts or feelings to the work. To tell the two apart I like to think of new criticism as a science teacher and reader response to a good writer. A science teacher will tell you facts. Everything you need to know to pass is in the books. There is one conclusive answer that everyone should end up with if followed correctly. As oppose to the good writer who may have a certain way his work was created by values and craves that outside emotion for growth to his work. He would want people to take time and really ingest what he wrote out to maybe bring up the same emotion he felt while writing or to see what other emotions were evoked. The more personal the better the work in reader response. There will never be one answer or conclusion it will mean different things to different people. This is what makes it great.
My journey reading through “The Mother” with reader response criticism was so much more enjoyable and allowed us to see so many different perspectives of the story.

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

more enjoyable because it really allows the reader to connect to the work.
I have talked a lot about how these two styles are different but I would also like to point out how they are similar. You really can’t have one without the other. Even when using new criticism your focus isn’t on little things but you still have to find the different elements of the work to come to the unifying idea. You still have to somewhat use new criticism in reader response as well. You need to know the way it was structured first and then be able to ask questions or bring feelings into why it was structured that way. In my understanding of what we learned you kind of look for the same things in both styles and just pay more attention to certain elements. All in all its like Ying and Yang you have to have a good balance of both. Too much or too little of one would not work.
To conclude I would like to briefly share which style I prefer. I without a doubt love reader response more however sometimes I do appreciate the directness of new criticism. Reader response was so much more enjoyable for me, but if you will never have a direct answer. You never really have a straight conclusion with reader response. It will always be different to different people according to different things. It constantly changes. I love being able to apply other people’s thoughts and my own to a work, however, I also enjoy the direct answer I get from new criticism. The way to fully understand a passage I feel is to look at it from both styles. You need to have a good balance and knowledge of both to get the most out of a reading.