Theme Of Abortion Will Not Let You Forget By Gwendolyn Brooks

The speaker shows a mother trapped emotionally, she is unable to forget the dramatic events of multiple abortions. The woman is facing more than one painful memory of abortion. The memories of one abortion were hard enough, while additional occurrences made an increase in the discomfort of the mother.

In this poem, Gwendolyn Brooks writes, Abortions will not let you forget./ You remember the children you got that you did not get,/ (Brooks, Lines 1-2). The opening lines in the poem “The mother” sets a regretful tone for the first stanza of the poem. The mother had experienced numerous abortions and is now remorseful. The mother begins to talk about how future experiences will never take place. For example, you will never neglect or beat/ Them, or silence or buy with a sweet. / You will never wind up the sucking-thumb/ Or scuttle off ghosts that come. / (Brooks, Lines 5-8).

The woman begins to talk about her pain and loss in the second stanza. She is haunted by the voices of the children she had aborted. The woman hears their faint cries in her head. Brooks writes “I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children” (Brooks, Line 11). The woman says, "Believe that in my deliberateness I was not deliberate. . . . Though why should I whine," she asks, "Whine that the crime was other than mine?" (Brooks, Lines 21-23) She tries to justify her actions by saying she had no other choice. The crime she committed was not hers.

Society has made the woman believe that what she did was a heinous crime. She feels guilty; however, she tries to act nonchalant. The woman tries to brush of the guilt by saying “Since anyhow you are dead. Or rather, or instead, you were never made.” (Brooks, Lines 25-27).

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... aborted her children. She begins to think about the joy of having children. In contrast, the poem “those winter days”, it displays how children can be ungrateful for things parents do. It shows how a young boy believes his father doesn’t love because he is not affectionate. The father goes to work and comes home in pain. However, the father still performs the necessary tasks of keeping the house warm and polishing the children’s shoes. If the woman in “the mother” had not aborted their children, would they grow up to be the perfect little angels she dreams of? The father in “Those Winter Day’s” had sacrificed his own happiness for his child. The father’s life revolved around his son. Perhaps the woman in “the mother” was not ready to make those sacrifices as the father did. The woman could have not been able to carry out the duties of raising a child on her own.