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The Sonnet Ballad Gwendolyn Brooks Analysis

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The poem, “the sonnet-ballad” by Gwendolyn Brooks, shows a universal theme of loss which expresses a message about how people could change overtime after a major tragedy. The speaker of the poem repeatedly asks their mother where happiness is. The way the speaker speaks in the poem is clearly depressing as she says, “What can I use an empty heart-cup for…” (line 4). Through the mood of the poem, readers could identify its central themes and loss is one of them. The speaker’s lover has left her and believes that he might be dead. Consequently, the narrator says that her man’s love won’t be the same anymore because of what war has done to change him. The repetition of the interrogative sentence, “Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?” (lines
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