An Explication of Gwendolyn Brooks “The Mother” Brooks “The Mother” deals with abortion and the mother’s emotional state. It does this through a very detailed remembrance when a mother gets an abortion and feels miserable and realizes how she cannot visually perceive the child or children grow up, live life gracefully, or understand how it’s the little things the children do is what a mother will adore and miss. Brooks takes us to the perspective of some mother’s experiences with abortion and how they handle the guilt. Throughout this poem it shows denouements of grief on abortion and the terminus result of the loving affection a mother shows. In the first stanza the speaker states how she feels about abortion. As you read the first stanza you notice it happens to be in a second point of view form. She is basically saying how the children you got that you never got will never endure certain fulfillments in life. This meaning the mother will never remember or have a memory of the little things in life is what makes raising children precious and memorable. In the second stanza it was more guilt than anything. The speaker writes the second stanza in a first person point of view. As you read through it, it seems the speaker has experience with abortion and takes it in to a more personal matter. …show more content…
An example of this would be in the first line, “Abortions will not let you forget” and another example would be in the second stanza, “I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.” These sentences both state “abortions and Children in a plural form, this could mean the speaker is writing about more than one abortion. Once reading this it makes you think of all the troublesome hardships, and grieving of the abortions she has had to go through. It makes you wonder, did she genuinely love her unborn
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.
...ut something the mother is doing for herself, while the second poem is all about the sacrifices the father made for his son. Comparing them shows the mother to be the more "selfish" of the two, in that her child and husband are distractions from her revelry, and they are somewhat burdensome to her. But the father is totally self-sacrificing -- getting up in the "blueblack cold," making a fire with "cracked hands that ached." He takes no thought for his own comfort, except, possibly, when he gets angry. This makes me think if the father had spent some time relaxing like the mother, maybe he wouldn't have gotten as angry. Maybe thinking of yourself every once in awhile is a good thing, I don't know, but it is interesting to note the contrast. I think mother in the first poem is person we can relate to, but the father in the second poem is a person we admire.
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.
Through an intimate maternal bond, Michaels mother experiences the consequences of Michaels decisions, weakening her to a debilitating state of grief. “Once he belonged to me”; “He was ours,” the repetition of these inclusive statements indicates her fulfilment from protecting her son and inability to find value in life without him. Through the cyclical narrative structure, it is evident that the loss and grief felt by the mother is continual and indeterminable. Dawson reveals death can bring out weakness and anger in self and with others. The use of words with negative connotations towards the end of the story, “Lonely,” “cold,” “dead,” enforce the mother’s grief and regressing nature. Thus, people who find contentment through others, cannot find fulfilment without the presence of that individual.
When this tale is looked at from a deeper perspective, it is learned that the mothers wish is to be loved and not have to worry about her child that has come in the way of her and her
The daughter alludes to an idea that her mother was also judged harshly and made to feel ashamed. By the daughters ability to see through her mothers flaws and recognize that she was as wounded as the child was, there is sense of freedom for both when the daughter find her true self. Line such as “your nightmare of weakness,” and I learned from you to define myself through your denials,” present the idea that the mother was never able to defeat those that held her captive or she denied her chance to break free. The daughter moments of personal epiphany is a victory with the mother because it breaks a chain of self-loathing or hatred. There is pride and love for the women they truly were and is to be celebrated for mother and daughter.
...nal family. The second poem uses harsh details described in similes, metaphors, and personification. The message of a horribly bad childhood is clearly defined by the speaker in this poem. Finally, the recollection of events, as described by the two speakers, is distinguished by the psychological aspect of how these two children grew up. Because the first child grew up in a passive home where everything was hush-hush, the speaker described his childhood in that manner; trying to make it sound better than what it actually was. The young girl was very forward in describing her deprivation of a real family and did not beat around the bush with her words. It is my conclusion that the elements of tone, imagery, and the recollection of events are relevant to how the reader interprets the message conveyed in a poem which greatly depends on how each element is exposed.
This darkly satiric poem is about cultural imperialism. Dawe uses an extended metaphor: the mother is America and the child represents a younger, developing nation, which is slowly being imbued with American value systems. The figure of a mother becomes synonymous with the United States. Even this most basic of human relationships has been perverted by the consumer culture. The poem begins with the seemingly positive statement of fact 'She loves him ...’. The punctuation however creates a feeling of unease, that all is not as it seems, that there is a subtext that qualifies this apparently natural emotional attachment. From the outset it is established that the child has no real choice, that he must accept the 'beneficence of that motherhood', that the nature of relationships will always be one where the more powerful figure exerts control over the less developed, weaker being. The verb 'beamed' suggests powerful sunlight, the emotional power of the dominant person: the mother. The stanza concludes with a rhetorical question, as if undeniably the child must accept the mother's gift of love. Dawe then moves on to examine the nature of that form of maternal love. The second stanza deals with the way that the mother comforts the child, 'Shoosh ... shoosh ... whenever a vague passing spasm of loss troubles him'. The alliterative description of her 'fat friendly features' suggests comfort and warmth. In this world pain is repressed, real emotion pacified, in order to maintain the illusion that the world is perfect. One must not question the wisdom of the omnipotent mother figure. The phrase 'She loves him...' is repeated. This action of loving is seen as protecting, insulating the child. In much the same way our consumer cultur...
The first stanza describes the depth of despair that the speaker is feeling, without further explanation on its causes. The short length of the lines add a sense of incompleteness and hesitance the speaker feels towards his/ her emotions. This is successful in sparking the interest of the readers, as it makes the readers wonder about the events that lead to these emotions. The second and third stanza describe the agony the speaker is in, and the long lines work to add a sense of longing and the outpouring emotion the speaker is struggling with. The last stanza, again structured with short lines, finally reveals the speaker 's innermost desire to "make love" to the person the speaker is in love
On line 16 Bishop uses a long hyphen sara to pause before she breaks down and says “¬¬–̶ Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture/”. She is remembering the qualities of the lover she lost. On line 17 when Bishop uses the present tense words “I love…” as if admitting that she still loves the person she lost. Then again as followed on line 17 “…I shan’t have lied. It’s evident”. She admits that she lied in her poem. As mentioned before the thesis repeats in line 18 of the last quatrain stanza but this time uses an extra word, “too”. The word “too” actually means that losing is “not so easy” as she had believed it was at the beginning of the poem. The use of enjambment throughout the poem goes beyond the literal meaning. Bishop’s use of enjambment within the lines interpret that when one loses someone it is not the end of that pain but rather that the pain will always be present and what matters is how one person copes with that pain and accepts the fact that one will always lose. There is much resistance in Bishop’s words from the beginning of the poem when she uses the word “master” as if having control and then switches to the opposing word “disaster” as if out of control. The use of Bishops words at the beginning of the poem refers to her earlier years when she lost her father when she was eight months old which was not so hard
Brooks uses several literary devices to show the shame and grief that she must endure because she had her children aborted. Brooks uses the tone of her poem to make the readers understand how guilty she feels. The tone of the poem can be seen all through the verses, as she says, “If I poisoned the
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.
4. In lines 85 to the end of the poem is where we can find the true meaning of the piece. After what seems to be a very bi-polar first part, the speaker finally settles with being one of a kind. She claims that “song has touched her lips with fire/ and made her heart a shrine;” and feels as if she has this special gift (poetry) that she hopes will be remembered forever.
Katherine Philips gained a lot of attention as a poet after writing “On the Death of My Dearest Child, Hector Philips”. This poem was written in a way to give readers an emotional account of a mother mourning the experience of losing her child. Philips expressed deep emotions from a maternal standpoint in the elegy. Unlike Jonson, Philips had the unspoken right of claiming a deep maternal connection with her son through pregnancy and childbirth. Philips’ approach to writing “On the Death of My Dearest Child” illustrates that the pain of losing her son, Hector, was enough for her to never write another verse again.
Katherine Philips is desperately trying to renew her faith in life, but she is struggling to do so because of the death of her son. She is attempting to justify the loss of her child as a form of consolation, while keeping somewhat emotionally detached to the later death of her stepson in “In Memory of F.P.” The differing phrases, words, and language contrast the two elegies and emphasize the loss and pain in “Epitaph” while diminishing the pain in “Memory of FP.”