In a world in which abortion is considered either a woman's right or a sin against God, the poem "The Mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks gives a voice to a mother lamenting her aborted children through three stanzas in which a warning is given to mothers, an admission of guilt is made, and an apology to the dead is given. The poet-speaker, the mother, as part of her memory addresses the children that she "got that [she] did not get" (2). The shift in voice from stanza to stanza allows Brooks to capture the grief associated with an abortion by not condemning her actions, nor excusing them; she merely grieves for what might have been. The narrator's longing and regret over the children she will never have is highlighted by the change in tone throughout the poem.
A quick overview of "The Mother" indicates three stanzas, each of which has a different length than the other two and each stanza is of an alternate rhyme scheme. The first stanza is comprised of ten lines of five rhymed......
Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
Approximate Word Count: 1704
Approximate Pages: 7 (260 words per double-spaced page) |