Gwendolyn Brooks The Sonnet-Ballad

In 1949, Gwendolyn Brooks wrote “the sonnet-ballad”. This poem is written in Shakespearean form and is about a woman, the narrator, losing her lover because he is going off to war. Instead of believing in a chance of her husband coming back home, she tries to accept that he is gone and will not return. Even though she admits she is losing her husband, it may not mean she believes he will die. The narrator gives up all hope that she will ever get her husband back from the war, even if he does return home.

The narrator shows she has lost hope of his return in all three quatrains. In the first quatrain, she says “They took my lover’s tallness off to war, / Left me lamenting” (Brooks 2-3) which is her saying she is left there mourning after her husband left and “Now I cannot guess / What can I use an empty heart-cup for.” (3-4). She is saying that now that he is gone her heart is useless because it is empty and by using the metaphor comparing her heart to a cup, it uses imagery to make it easier for the reader to picture an empty heart. Then, she starts off

Here she uses a metaphor to compare death to a flirty, beautiful woman that can cause a man to change. This could mean that a man could die in war because he has been around it so much that he assumes it will happen to him, accepts death, and stops fighting for his life. It could also mean that she thinks that if he survives the war and comes home, that she still will have lost her husband because being around that much death changed him and he will not return as the man she knew before he left. She then begins the couplet by saying. “And he will be the one to stammer, “Yes”.” (15). She is acknowledging that he will accept that change death is bringing upon him and then asks again “Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?”