ipl-logo

The Mother By Gwendolyn Brooks Analysis

881 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Effect of abortion on society

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. …show more content…

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

Show More
Related
852 Words | 4 Pages

Capitalization and Pronouns Gwendolyn Brooks employs the use of capitalization and pronouns in her poem “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon” as a way to demonstrate the tensions between white femininity and black masculinity in the south during the era directly preceding the Civil Rights Movement. During this time, the white man was afforded the ability to dominate over the word of white women and black men. Throughout this poem, Brooks portrays the complex dimensions that race and gender played in the murder of Emmett Till.

Read More
541 Words | 3 Pages

Exigence’s of The Invisible Island Imagine losing your mother, father, or even giving birth to a still born child without ever being given the opportunity to pay respect to them and giving the proper burial they deserve. Imagine never being notified about the death of a grandmother or best friend who you may have lost touch with a few years before, then later finding out it is practically forbidden to ever able to visit their grave. Christopher Maag brought this problem to the attention of many by creating this heartfelt and informative article to raise awareness about this mass grave that is practically nonexistent to the public eye.

Read More
1484 Words | 6 Pages

Thank goodness, she turned out alright. But I’ll never risk it again. Never! The strain is simply too - too hellish,” (36). Larsen uses words provoking anxiety and horror to give the reader insight into Clare’s mind when she thinks about pregnancy and motherhood.

Read More
804 Words | 4 Pages

Have you ever felt loss so deep that everything you see is different just because that person is gone? In Mother by Ted Kooser the speaker’s mother’s death made his world view more sorrowful. Through this view of the world Kooser uses symbolism, personification, and imagery to show the speaker’s feelings about his mother dying. Symbolism is used in many different ways throughout this poem to present the speakers feelings on his mother dying. Her vibrance is shown in the lightness and happiness of nature.

Read More
1089 Words | 5 Pages

One of the main protagonists, Mama, is telling her son the reasons for what she did to help her family’s struggle. She says, “When it gets like that in life-you just got to do something different, push on out and do something bigger....” (588). The character Mama gets a check from the insurance company for $10,000 dollars due to her husband’s death and she doesn't know what to do with it. In the play, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Mama is motivated to/by the chance to get her family a house.

Read More
366 Words | 2 Pages

“What could she do?” (Soto 3). We have all at some point or another been the victim of circumstance, whether we accept it or not. The short story “Mother and Daughter” by Gary Soto tells the story of an instance in which eighth grader, Yollie Moreno, is the victim of circumstance. Yollie is a smart, but innocent, young woman who lives with her impoverished mother.

Read More
490 Words | 2 Pages

However, if she shows kindness to the unborn child by not letting the woman abort the child, she would be showing crudity to them by ruining their lives. The audience discovers that no matter the choice, whether they did or didn’t abort the child, there will always be

Read More
856 Words | 4 Pages

You can obviously tell from the opening of this poem that the speaker is talking about his daughter and certain that his daughter is basically destined to have a forbidding life with no future. However, in the very last line of the poem he acknowledges that he has no daughter and his desire none and that puts a whole new twist on the poem. The first three lines the speaker introduce and describes his daughter. “Looking into my daughters eyes I read” “Beneath the innocence of morning flesh” “Concealed, hinting’s of death she does not heed.”

Read More
1024 Words | 5 Pages

This part in the poem seems kind of cynical because she is saying that she can hear the voices of the children she has killed and it’s a dark and twisty way to show the guilt that she has for having so many abortions or even just aborting her first child. During the time that this poem was written in 1945, abortions were illegal so it can be assumed that these abortions could be self-inflicted for various reasons (Abortion Surveillance). The speaker could have been raped or the child would have been born out of wedlock, this could be the shame that she feels about having the abortions along with killing so many children since it can be assumed that she had more than one

Read More
1201 Words | 5 Pages

After finding Sarah’s baby buried in the garden, she nurses the baby back to health and houses both the mother and baby saying “I will take the responsibility” (70-71). Mother nurtures them without question, providing for the baby and Sarah as if they are her own family. After Sarah’s death, Mother continues to raise the baby as her own and after the death of Father and a year of mourning, she marries

Read More
1684 Words | 7 Pages

They contrast this to Abortion by stating that if the mother chooses abortion, she may feel sad or empty instead of feeling fulfilled, she will always remember the event as something tragic. (Abortion Facts

Read More
1787 Words | 8 Pages

Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother signifies a pivotal point in her writing style. Her earlier novels have some semblance of her personal life, but, in this novel, the protagonist Xuela does not share a common experience with that of the author’s life. The mother-obsessed protagonists of her earlier fiction are absent. Instead, we have a seventy year old half-Carib Dominican.

Read More
486 Words | 2 Pages

The poem Truth, by Gwendolyn Brooks, has a lot of symbolism in it. Different things throughout the poem both represent parts of the Civil Rights movement as well as things that we can relate to our lives today. She did really well with her literary elements used, especially personification. This makes her writing more relatable and realistic in our minds to grasp. Truth is a wonderful poem full of all sorts of different literary elements.

Read More
580 Words | 3 Pages

The only woman in the world who will still cradle you in her arms even if you've stabbed her loving heart is your mother. The short story “Teenage Wasteland” by Anne Tyler is about guilt and reveals mother’s feelings towards her children. A loving mother will feel guilty for anything that happens to her children, and even for that how they feel. Mothers is the person who cares the most about her child. The story “Teenage Wasteland” tells about a common situation many families experience: a misunderstood child creates problems to his parents, not by fault, but because he feels unwanted.

Read More
904 Words | 4 Pages

Anne Bradstreet’s three elegies for her grandchildren are very sanding and have many similarities, as well as differences. The three poems by Bradstreet are titled, “In Memory of My Dear Grandchild, Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August, 1665, Being a Year and a Half Old," " In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Anne Bradstreet, Who Deceased June 20, 1669, Being Three Years and Seven Months Old," and "On My Dear Grandchild Simon Bradstreet, Who Died on 16 November, 1669, Being But a Month, and One Day Old.” In the very first poem, it would seem her first grandchild had pasted away at a year and a half old. Bradstreet’s talk about how God gives and takes away.

Read More

More about The Mother By Gwendolyn Brooks Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document