Gwendolyn Brooks 'Sonnet Ballad'

“the sonnet-ballad” by Gwendolyn Brooks is a Shakespearean sonnet that uses imagery to paint a picture of war stealing a lover’s happiness by seducing her lover away. This passage portrays that the lover cannot be happy since her significant other has been taken away by war. War has a negative effect on women, and the relationships with their lovers. When death takes away a woman’s lover, they must overcome sorrow and anguish of their loss. In the first quatrain, there is a sense of desperation in losing happiness. “They took my lover’s tallness off to war,” (Brooks 2) uses imagery to depict that although her significant other is strong, he was unable to stop war from taking him away. While she is trying to cope with her sadness, she uses imagery to compare her heart to an empty …show more content…
After war is described as seducing the man away, the next to last line changes the tone more. By saying, “And he will be the one to stammer, ‘Yes.’” says the man was willing to leave his beloved to follow the enchanting war (14). Describing war as beautiful could help her cope with her why her lover left for war. This realization helps her see that it was too irresistible for her lover to say no. While she has had her lover to keep her company, she runs back to her mother in an attempt to cope with her pain. A woman’s mother is there for her child before they find a lover, and a mother will always be who a child runs to if something happens. The use of anaphora in the first and last lines appeals to the reader’s emotions, and exhibits how distressed the speaker is over losing her lover. The speaker of this sonnet is troubled over her loss, and turns to her mother for advice. We envision a tall strong man being taken to war, but the end of the sonnet produces an image of war enticing her lover away. Now that her lover is dead, she has to cope and find her