An Empty Heart Cup Gwendolyn Brooks Analysis

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Gwendolyn Brooks, a world renowned black, female poet, made it her life’s purpose to create positive change in the lives of others. Brooks was born on “June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas” (Contemporary Authors Online 1), then her family moved to Chicago during the Great Migration when she was six weeks old. Growing up on the south side, Brooks saw the daily struggles that blacks faced. There was a lot of racial tension building at this time, as many more blacks pushed back against oppression. Brooks was, “Deeply involved with black life, black pain and black spirits” (Lee 2). Throughout her lifetime, she was an activist, who worked to promote blacks to study literature by writing poetry. She published many books and wrote countless pieces of poetry, …show more content…

“An empty heart-cup” (4) is not something difficult to picture. Hearts are generally associated with love. This is image is supposed to evoke gloom, now that her lover is gone. This cup represents the heart of the narrator. The narrator is drained of love just like her cup. The narrator had invested her emotions into a man, and with her lover gone, her emotions went with him. Nothing but melancholy is now felt. She has no direction of where she wants to take her life, since she has been through so much. What had been in her heart, has been taken from her, and nothing would satisfy her ache. “He won’t be coming back here any more” (5). Any hope of finding the same feelings the narrator had for her lover have …show more content…

By taking a step back, a progressive style can be observed in “The Sonnet Ballad”. Ultimately, Brooks is trying to break away from traditional ideas, by using them to show grief. Throughout the poem, the narrator has taken the role of a traditional woman- which ends up tormenting her. Brooks transforms the traditional ideas and forms she uses intensify this torment that most others of this time are also feeling which simply is hurt. By manipulating the form, Brooks is taking a step towards a modern traditions such as an independent, working woman. Brooks wants to relay to all women that all happiness shouldn’t be placed in a person. Being reliant on others to bring happiness is a mistake since immortality doesn’t exist and with time, people change. Happiness needs to come from within oneself. That is the larger implication Brooks makes. It is the reason she won the Pulitzer

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