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- The poem contains thirty-five lines, which are separated into three stanzas. The title, “the mother,” is ironic, for this mother is a woman who has lost her children because of very difficult and painful decisions—decisions that she believes were for the best.
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Aug 28, 2024 · The poem’s title itself is ironic, presenting a paradox between the identity of a mother and the act of abortion. Brooks further complicates this by expressing deep maternal love and grief for the unborn: “Believe me, I loved you all.”
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The mother is a short poem in free verse, written mostly in the first person. In her narrator, Gwendolyn Brooks adopts the persona of an impoverished mother. In the tradition of the lyric, this narrator addresses the reader directly and personally to convey her feelings. The poem contains thirty-five lines, which are separated into three stanzas. T...
The brief final stanza is climactic. The narrator confronts her familiarity with her lost children and, despite her decision to abort them, proclaims her love for them. The final line, consisting of only one word, All, is particularly effective in that it stands in stark contrast to the apparent harshness of both her decision and her own attitude t...
The city is an important and recurring symbol in Brookss work. She has created a series of portraits of women inhabiting Bronzeville, a setting for many of her poems, which may be taken symbolically as the African American community. In a way similar to that of Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brookss work expresses the tragic and dehumanizing aspects of ...
In stanza 2, she imagines giving birth, suckling babies at her breast, and hearing them cry and play games; she even thinks of their loves and marriages. Yet these thoughts are bluntly followed by the words, anyhow you are dead.
The speaker cannot quite bear the word dead, however, and immediately follows it with Or rather, . . ./ You were never made. The alternation of accepting and evading responsibility, of plainly saying my dim killed children, then denying that terrible picture, gives the poem its complexity and its deep emotion. The speaker begins, in the first stanz...
Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “The Mother” has been widely praised for its powerful and poignant portrayal of a mother’s grief over the loss of her children. Critics have noted the poem’s use of vivid imagery and metaphor to convey the depth of the mother’s pain, as well as its exploration of complex themes such as motherhood, loss, and ...
others. The title seems ironic because the "mother" who speaks in this work spends most of the poem discussing her lack of actual motherhood. The bulk of the work is given over to lamenting the deaths of the various children she has carried - children who were borne but never born. This "mother," then, both is and is not a "mother" in the
“the mother” is a deeply introspective poem driven by the speaker’s internal reckoning. The shape of the poem follows the stream of consciousness of a would-be mother attempting to make sense of the emotional fallout of several abortions.
What's Up With the Title? The title of this poem names the speaker—she's "the mother." And she's not just any ol' mother. She's the mother. The interesting thing about this, of course, is that "the mother" has had an abor...
“The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks has been widely praised for its raw and honest portrayal of the pain and grief that comes with losing a child. However, it has also faced criticism for its controversial subject matter and the way it portrays motherhood.
