wendolyn Brooks’, “The Sonnet-Ballad”, can in-a-way be confusing to some. When first reading, you are able to understand that her love has gone off to war; however, you are not able to differentiate if she is talking about her love leaving her for another woman or her love dying in battle. I honestly believe that she was talking about her love dying and she’s grieving in disbelief.
The narrator begins with the grand question, “Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?” From the beginning, anyone could tell that something is going wrong with the narrator. She then proceeds to speak of how her lover has walked grandly out the door, and that he is never coming back. When she states, “when he went walking grandly out that door,” she actually was speaking of him dying in battle. I feel that the narrator blames the lover for leaving her all alone and the only way that the narrator could describe the pain was by using
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The narrator seems to be in an emotionally hysterical state, in my opinion, which is normal for someone who has lost someone who they loved. In order for her to release those feelings, she consoled in her mother. However, now that I think of it, who’s to say that the narrators’ mother was still alive? The narrator could have just been speaking to her mother in prayer because of the tragic situation that she was going through; hoping for things to get better. She was not necessarily looking for an answer from her mother when she questioned, “Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?”. At this time the narrator needed to get her emotions off of her chest; this death could have been a major emotional nudge that emotionally damaged her. Her lover could have possibly been the only one close to her that she had left; so, him dying in battle could have really hurt