The poem “the mother” is told by a woman who seems to have had multiple abortions. She also seems to be haunted by the choices she made to abort her “children”. (Lines 1-2) “Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.” Although her choices to abort her children seem to be deliberate (Line 21) “Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate”, it is never expressed exactly how many abortions she’s had or the reasons of why she had them. She seems to value motherhood but still has chosen to end her pregnancies and does not seem to feel comfortable, at least presently, with the choices she has made in the past. She also seems to know what being a mother entails as she says in lines 7-8 “You will never wind up the sucking-thumb / Or scuttle off ghosts that come.” The speaker wonders …show more content…
The tone in lines 1-20 can be described as sentimental, sad, vivid, and remorseful. Reflecting on the appearance of an aborted child by describing (line 3) “The damp small pulps with little of with no hair” By Lines 20 through 33 she is addressing the children she has aborted. The tone now is realistic and she expresses love, searching for forgiveness, and sorrow. (Lines 22-28) “Though why should I whine, Whine that the crime was other than mine?- Since somehow you are dead. Or rather, or instead, You were never made. But that too, I am afraid, Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?” The tone turns to sincerity and loving as the speaker seems to attempt to reassure her aborted children that she indeed loved them with all of her
Stanza three again shows doubtfulness about the mother’s love. We see how the mother locks her child in because she fears the modern world. She sees the world as dangers and especially fears men. Her fear of men is emphasized by the italics used. In the final line of the stanza, the mother puts her son on a plastic pot. This is somewhat symbolic of the consumeristic society i.e. manufactured and cheap.
Through diction, the tone of the poem is developed as one that is downtrodden and regretful, while at the same time informative for those who hear her story. Phrases such as, “you are going to do bad things to children…,” “you are going to suffer… ,” and “her pitiful beautiful untouched body…” depict the tone of the speaker as desperate for wanting to stop her parents. Olds wrote many poems that contained a speaker who is contemplating the past of both her life and her parent’s life. In the poem “The Victims,” the speaker is again trying to find acceptance in the divorce and avoidance of her father, “When Mother divorced you, we were glad/ … She kicked you out, suddenly, and her/ kids loved it… ” (Olds 990). Through the remorseful and gloomy tone, we see that the speaker in both poems struggles with a relationship between her parents, and is also struggling to understand the pain of her
Sad because the little girl has to lie about being African American. Some argue that the poem is not sad because she chooses to lie. However, in line line 14 the little girl says, “I could even keep quiet, quiet as kept, like the time a white girl said( squeezing my hand), Now we have three of us in this class” (Trethewey, 2000). This is sad because she is lying to protect herself from the cruelty of rejection, instead of embracing her heritage. If her white friend or the white community finds out who she really is, they will probably treat her worse than they do the blacks, because the little girl is biracial. In “the mother”, the tone at first is also sadness. The mother sounds like she is in deep regret about her decision to abort her children. However, by the author’s use of words such as “them” and “they”, it makes it clear that the mother has had multiple abortions. To some readers this is where sadness can turn into “hate”. While we understand it happening once, we can’t seem to wrap our heads around twice or even a third
One cannot raise a child without mutual respect. Emotion and anxiety must drive her instincts. Her ability to foster is only heightened by personal imperfections and overwhelming responsibility that lead to a lack of confidence. Yet the prevailing characteristic that separates a ‘birth giver’ from a ‘mother’ is the unconditional, undying, and at times underestimated love for her child. To be a mother in the purest sense, she must embrace this notion of nurture.
The point when considering individual encounters, "The Mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks touches on the frequently passionate theme of premature birth. This sonnet was transformed decades back, yet still remains significant right up 'til the present time. Tolerating premature birth and the conclusion can in fact be a testing undertaking for a lot of people, while others adjust to it without much of an issue. Gwendolyn Brooks, in this great work, permits us to investigate the mom’s perspective purpose of fetus removal via an abortion and how a mother reacts to her interesting circumstance. All around the lyric the speaker hints at distress, using symbolism, concerning the theme of premature birth and its conclusions by exhibiting to us her perspective, memories, love, unpretentious triggers, and disarray.
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.
rotted,”in lines nine and ten establishes a comparison between her father’s loss of innocence, and
In one of Brooks’ first poems “The Mother”, Brooks discuses the heartache and the pain of a mother who has had numerous abortions and now feels remorse for what she has done. She speaks of how the child is created and growing in the womb of the mother, but how the child’s life is ended before the child could ever become someone successful. The mother never gets a chance to watch her child grow or to discipline their child for being disobedient or ever get to comfort the child when the child is sad. Towards the end of the poem, the mother apologizes to the child because the child will never have a chance to grow and experience life on their own. Though the mother has killed her child, she states that she still loves her unborn child for the rest of her life.
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.
"The Mother," by Gwendolyn Brooks, is about a mother who has experienced a number of abortions and now has remorse. You can feel the remorse she is going through when reading the poem. She is regretful, yet explains that she had no other choice. It is a heartfelt poem where she talks bout how she will not be able to do certain things for the children that she aborted. This poem may be a reflection of what many other women are dealing with.
“The Mother” (Gwendolyn Brooks) has three stanza has and aabbccdd etc. rhyming scheme that is called couplets. The first stanza The first stanza started of “abortions will not let you forget” (Gwendolyn Brooks) this is a strong statement that supported the theme of this poem. Then Brooks go on and telling how the mother did not get to hold the child that she aborted and how sad it was for her.
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.
Whenever someone mentions the word “mother”, one always tend to think of a very kind and caring figure who always whishes the best for her children. In the poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Huges, a mother is telling her son about the obstacles she had to overcome in order to get to the position she is in right now. There comes many moments in our life when we just want to give up and let fate handle everything. We face many difficulties that may not seem we can overcome but we should never give up right away. The mother in the poem is trying to convince her son to keep pushing and at the same time she is trying to set an example though her own past experience.
You know how annoying it is to forget something that you are supposed to remember, now imagine if you never forgot anything except for this one thing, now imagine if that one thing you can't remember is your mom, who she was, what she looked like, anything about her at all. Thats what I am hiring. In the novel The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates the protagonist, Hirem, has a photographic memory, but can't seem to remember much of anything about his mother. In the world of "The Water Dancer," memory is a double-edged sword. For the protagonist, Hiram, memory serves as a harsh reminder of the traumas inflicted by the institution of slavery.
Instead, her poems define them by the pain and stress they lead to as well as the deterioration and eventual obliteration they cause to the mother, both as an individual and in the physical sense. This new perspective brings to light the often hidden darkness and restrictions associated with pregnancy and motherhood that many women are unaware of yet end up experiencing at some point in their lifetime.