The Planned Child Poem Analysis

When comparing and contrasting the two poems “The Mother” and “The Planned Child” it is clear to see how selfish decisions are made in two totally different perspectives. In “The Mother” the reader see’s a mother who has had multiple abortions and suffers from regretting the decisions. This is one of the main differences in the two stories, how the character in “The Mother” see’s her selfish decisions and recognizes them. In “The Planned Child” we see the character in the story as the child, quite the opposite from “The Mother.” She is upset how she was a planned child, how she was not conceived out of her view of “passion” and “love.” This is a completely opinionated thought process, and in many eyes is a selfish decision as these children …show more content…
This is how much more emotion Gwendolyn Brooks suffers throughout her struggles with her abortions. We see these deep, rich emotions come out with Gwendolyn Brooks choices of lines and words throughout the poem. Her use of the word “love” and “never” are both very strong words that she uses to describe her emotions. Additionally, the line “You remember the children you got that you did not get” then going into detail about all of the things Gwendolyn missed as being a mother (2). When looking at Sharon Olds realization of her mistake on her views, the reader does not see these same type of emotions. It is easy to see why, and that is how Gwendolyn’s poor decisions can never be fixed, she lost all of her children. While Sharon’s decisions were not as life changing as Gwendolyn’s. When looking in stanza two of “The Planned Child” she comes to this new idea casually, sitting with friends drinking wine, “But when a friend was pouring wine and said that I seem to have been a child who had been wanted,I took the wine against my lips” (11-13). This displays how casual Sharon’s change of mindset was. It was not a life changing event like Gwendolyn Brooks’s change in mindset