When thinking about personal experiences, “The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks touches on the often emotional topic of abortion. This poem was produced decades ago, yet still remains relevant to this day. Accepting abortion and the outcome can indeed be a challenging task for many, while others adapt to it without much of a problem. Gwendolyn Brooks writing allows us to take a look at the mothers view point of abortion and how a mother responds to her unique situation. Throughout the poem the speaker shows signs of grief concerning the topic of abortion and its outcomes by presenting to us her point of view, memories, love, subtle triggers, and confusion.
From the first stanza of the poem, the speaker provides us a quick snapshot of her feelings about the abortion. The first stanza is set in a second person point of view, with much of it explaining how her children will never realize certain fulfillments in life. Reading the second stanza in the poem, there is a sudden change to a first person point of view, where the speaker references herself multiple times. From this section in the reading, it becomes apparent this is much more of a personal matter to the narrator.
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We can see an example of the narrator facing more than one painful memory of abortion in the very first line, “Abortions will not let you forget”; followed by a mention in the first line of the second stanza, “…voices of my dim killed children”. Both the words “abortions” and “children” are given plural reference, which can be interpreted to mean more than one abortion is being spoken of in the writing. The memories of a mother dealing with the hardship of one abortion is hard enough, while additional abortions just adds to the discomfort of a grieving